Chapter 221: Tianjia Prince × Mixed-Blood Military Female (8): How Could Their Emperor Possibly Rank Below Ulysses?!

【Even in the end, Metis wasn't sure whether the problem between them could be considered resolved.

They had completed the step of revealing wings on their wedding night. He had made up for that missing step the female cared about, showing the wings that represented "affection and fidelity," so there shouldn't be any problem now, right?

Sitting behind his desk, Prince Metis thought absentmindedly.

A visitor notification appeared on his terminal. Metis quickly collected his thoughts, finished the work at hand, and prepared for the upcoming meeting.

Government affairs were far too tedious and complicated. Until now, Metis had managed by relying entirely on his powerful Psychic Force, which was practically equivalent to a supercomputer, but this clearly wasn't a sustainable solution. He needed to assemble a secretarial team of his own.

Ideally, this team would consist primarily of males, with a small number of sub-female employees as well.

Metis had previously trained several unmarried males to help him handle simple matters, but now he hoped to encourage married males to step out of their homes as well.

That was destined to be difficult. A married male's freedom to leave home was controlled by his Female Lord, so Metis could only rely on his reputation as an Imperial Prince and start with households where the females were relatively lenient.

When the Tianjia Emperor had still been around, the plan had encountered obstacle after obstacle. The females of the Imperial Capital had been extremely hesitant about allowing their Male Lords to enter the palace to work (and accompany the Prince), as though they had certain concerns.

As soon as the Tianjia Emperor left, however, all those females breathed a collective sigh of relief and agreed to let their Male Lords enter the palace to accompany the Prince.

The male Metis was meeting today was Colonel Kane's Male Lord.

Speaking of which, the male's Female Lord was also Caleb's blood brother and had attended their wedding with the others, so they could technically be considered relatives.

Metis approved the visitor request.

Not long afterward, a pink-haired male knocked on the door and entered, looking at him with curious yet restrained eyes.

"Greetings, Your Highness. I'm Nocas."

......

The Prince had a very good impression of the males.

It didn't matter if they didn't know how to handle the work at first. They could learn. Males with powerful Psychic Force generally had excellent learning abilities, and they were also more humble and eager to learn.

Nocas was one of those who particularly surprised him.

His information-processing and verbal communication skills were excellent. He knew many languages and was especially proficient in the Zerg language.

When Metis asked about it, Nocas modestly explained that his Female Lords and friends on StarNet had taught him the Zerg language.

Nocas had many Female Lords, so the Prince wasn't sure which one he meant.

He had married Caleb's younger brother quite early. Back when the latter was still a noncommissioned officer, he and several comrades from the same unit had applied together and married Nocas.

Over the years, he had risen from noncommissioned officer to colonel, and the next step would be Major General. Clearly, that was only a matter of time.

Normally, once Tianjia females accumulated enough military merit and rose through the ranks, they would continue applying for new males and marry Male Attendants. Colonel Kane, however, seemed to have abandoned that idea entirely, simply living as one large family with his Male Lord and his comrades.

Although there was technically a layer of kinship between them, the actual relationship was between Caleb and Colonel Kane. Their two families weren't particularly close, so the Prince didn't know much about them.

The Prince assigned Nocas work involving information screening and organization, as well as certain diplomatic documents.

On the way home, the Prince mentioned this to Caleb, who had come to pick him up.

"The Zerg language..." Caleb piloted the aircraft, looking ahead with a slightly unfocused gaze. "Everyone in my family is very good at the Zerg language."

The Prince was quite surprised.

Although the Tianjia and Zergs shared the same origins and their languages and writing systems had many similarities, very few Tianjia deliberately studied the Zerg language. Even when following novels on StarNet, most simply relied on webpage translation.

He suddenly remembered that he had no idea what language Ares and the Male Zerg used to communicate.

Ares's command of the Zerg language could basically be described as: capable of reading it and understanding it when spoken, but terrible at speaking it.

And a Male Zerg wouldn't normally go out of his way to learn the language of another species.

So how exactly did those two communicate?

Judging from the novel, they didn't seem to have any trouble communicating at all.

......】

Eugene's brain suddenly froze when he read this.

What language had he been using?

He had been speaking the Zerg language... right?

Eugene opened his contacts, intending to ask Ares what his older brother meant in the book when he said Ares couldn't speak the Zerg language well.

Then he noticed that the text in the messages Ares had sent him looked somewhat strange.

Looking more carefully, he realized that most of them were written in the Tianjia language.

[。。]: What's wrong?

Still Tianjia.

Yet Eugene had absolutely no difficulty reading it.

The meaning of those characters naturally surfaced in his mind, as easy to understand as his native language.

Eugene asked, "What language were you speaking when we first met?"

[。。]: Tianjia, of course.

That wasn't right, was it?

Eugene (Carl): What about me?

On the other side, Ares thought back for a moment before answering with certainty:

"Zerg. You only occasionally spoke Tianjia when we were together."

Come to think of it, Ares also found that strange. Carl could understand everything he said, which clearly meant he knew Tianjia, and at an extremely high level.

But most of the time, he spoke only the Zerg language. It was only when Ares's speech unconsciously influenced him that he would occasionally say a few sentences in Tianjia, and Carl himself didn't even seem to notice.

Now it was Eugene's turn to be shocked.

He had actually spoken Tianjia?!

He had never studied Tianjia! Why could he understand it, read it, and even speak it?

Could he have been exposed to the Tianjia language somewhere when he was very young?

Eugene carefully searched his memories. There wasn't a single memory of him learning Tianjia, yet all his knowledge of the language and writing system was perfectly clear, as though he had been born knowing it.

It was almost like...

Inherited memories.

Eugene was horrified.

Could I be Tianjia?

No, that couldn't be right.

He had a Male Parent and a Female Parent.

His Male Parent was a Male Zerg, his Female Parent was a Female Zerg, and he had been born among the Zergs. He also had the inherited memories of the Zerg race in his mind.

Eugene looked at Lieutenant General Caleb in the novel again and suddenly formed a hypothesis.

He went to ask his Male Parent.

[Eugene]: Male Parent, are you a pure-blooded Male Zerg?

Joshua: What exactly made you question my bloodline?

Eugene thought to himself that there hadn't been any piercing shriek of outrage, so the purity level must be pretty high.

[Eugene]: What about Female Parent?

Eugene immediately had his answer.

And he found it incredibly hard to believe.

His Female Parent treated him so well! Sure, he could sometimes be a little cold and strict, and his temper was somewhat explosive when dealing with outsiders, but weren't military females all like that? At home, his Female Parent was actually very easy to talk to. He frequently bought Eugene all sorts of things and wholeheartedly supported his interests. His relationship with Eugene's Male Parent also perfectly fit the traditional dynamic between a Male Lord and Female Lord.

How could a Female Parent like that possibly be "impure"?!

Unable to believe it, Eugene clutched his face and let out a piercing shriek.

If his Female Parent was a mixed-blood Female Zerg, didn't that mean Eugene himself also had some Tianjia blood?

One-quarter Tianjia???

The impure one was actually him?!

So he possessed a portion of the Tianjia's inherited memories, but not much. Those memories were mixed together with his Zerg inherited memories, making it impossible for him to distinguish between them. As a child, he had occasionally been confused by certain things, but it hadn't affected him much. As time passed, he had simply assumed that was how all Zergs were.

Eugene went to ask his Male Parent about it.

Joshua was silent for a moment before saying, "At first, I thought you naturally knew. Later, I realized you didn't seem to know anything about it and that you perceived yourself purely as a Zerg. That was fine too. You were living among the Zergs anyway. There was no need to add another racial identity to your self-perception and create unnecessary confusion, so I never told you."

Eugene's memories contained knowledge of the Tianjia language and writing system, but very little information directly related to the race itself. Perhaps that was because the Tianjia genes had been diluted.

That was why he had always perceived himself as entirely Zerg.

Now that he had suddenly learned he possessed Tianjia blood, he felt rather dazed.

And when he faced Ares again, his feelings were complicated.

Of course, he wasn't going to acknowledge Ares as his "Female Lord" just because of this tiny amount of Tianjia blood.

But then a thought suddenly occurred to him.

If the mixed-blood egg he and Ares had was born, wouldn't the proportion of Tianjia genes be higher?

Instead of half Zerg and half Tianjia, wouldn't it be three-eighths Zerg and five-eighths Tianjia?

No!!!

Eugene continued letting out piercing shrieks.

The next time Ares saw the Male Zerg, he found him completely wilted, like a plant deprived of sunlight and water.

"What happened?"

He raised a hand and brushed it over the Male Zerg's listless hair. He still preferred seeing him energetic and full of life, even if that made him incredibly noisy.

Eugene looked at Ares's belly, where the pregnancy was beginning to faintly show, then leaned against him and wrapped his arms around him, his heart filled with worry.

With more than half Tianjia blood, wouldn't a hatchling like that have a very difficult time living among the Zergs?

......

The readers on StarNet gradually began noticing that something felt off about the developments in these latest chapters, uncovering more and more clues.

[Lieutenant General Caleb knows a lot about the Zergs. Even in his internal thoughts, he compares the Tianjia with the Zergs. And everyone in Lieutenant General Caleb's family speaks the Zerg language really well... The more you think about it, the more terrifying it gets!]

[Could Lieutenant General Caleb's entire family have already been infiltrated by the Zergs? Is the Lieutenant General actually an undercover agent?! (Horrified!)]

[Calm down, calm down. This is the Zergs trying to slander our Lieutenant General and provoke suspicion and infighting among us.]

[I believe An-shen would never write something like that! (Sobbing)]

[Lieutenant General Caleb's family is a minor issue. An-shen even wrote about the Prince handling government affairs and forming a male secretarial team. (Covers face) Accept that this is just science fiction. It has absolutely nothing to do with reality.]

[Science fiction or not, if An-shen keeps writing like this, this book is going to get banned by the Imperial government.]

[Doesn't matter. Banned books are practically the norm for An-shen. We'll climb over the firewall ourselves. (Rose between teeth)]

[Have some backbone! I would never read a book that slanders the Tianjia!]

The Zerg readers couldn't wait for the Tianjia to leave.

Lieutenant General Caleb being a Zerg undercover agent? What was so exciting about that? He was only a Lieutenant General. That wasn't explosive enough.

They immediately started making parody videos.

Your Tianjia Emperor is actually our undercover agent. He has a family back among the Zergs, calls Lord Carl his Male Lord in private, serves him meticulously, and even while carrying an egg, he never forgets to infiltrate the Tianjia and serve his motherland—all for the sake of the future grand unification of the Zergs and Tianjia.

The Tianjia viewers who came across the videos exploded.

The part where the Tianjia Emperor accepted Marshal Ulysses's orders to infiltrate the Tianjia was particularly unbearable.

Turning the natural order completely upside down!

Absolutely outrageous!

How could their Emperor possibly rank below Ulysses?!

The Tianjia refused to accept this and made parody videos of their own in retaliation.

In the Tianjia version, Ulysses was the undercover agent the Tianjia had sent into Zerg territory. Carrying the Tianjia's orthodox ideals with him, he had gone among the Zergs to assimilate their civilization, establish female supremacy, strip Male Zergs of their privileges, reduce them to military resources, and make them obediently stay home incubating eggs.

And they didn't stop there.

They dragged the Generals and commanders from the other Military Regions into it too, from General Enzo to General Cyril and then Legion Commander Morris, giving every last one of them an elaborate backstory.

With the Zergs and Tianjia constantly making parody videos portraying each other as undercover agents, An's book—which wasn't remotely outrageous by comparison and whose supposed undercover plot existed entirely in the readers' speculation—suddenly seemed like a breath of fresh air.

All at once, the Tianjia found the book much easier to accept.

The Zergs were disappointed that they had failed to drive the Tianjia off Zerg StarNet and couldn't help admiring just how shamelessly persistent they were.

All they could do was redouble their efforts and keep making videos and writing short parody stories.