Chapter 232: Tianjia Prince × Mixed-Blood Military Female (17): [Holy crap! Lieutenant General Caleb is mixed-blood?!]

[Metis performed Psychic Soothing on Caleb.

He encountered no resistance whatsoever. Caleb practically laid everything open before him.

Only something buried deep within was shrouded in black mist, sealed away beneath layer after layer.

Perhaps this was what had made him feel before that Caleb was hiding something.

It would be a lie to say he wasn't curious, but every Tianjia had secrets of their own. Metis didn't insist on uncovering absolutely everything.

Caleb loved him. That was enough.

Metis withdrew and saw Caleb looking at him, appearing somewhat dazed.

He looked as though his entire body had been relaxed to the point that his thoughts had scattered.

It was a little like the blank state after waking from general anesthesia, as though the entire Tianjia had been reset to factory settings.

"How do you feel?" Metis asked him with a smile.

Caleb nodded blankly, his gaze following Metis with an utterly infatuated expression.

Having recovered his memories, Metis was in an excellent mood. He had completely let go of all his worries and thoroughly enjoyed the intimacy of having his mind pressed close against Caleb's. He wanted to satisfy any request Caleb might have.

And so he continued, "What else do you want?"

This factory-reset Caleb with his blank expression thought seriously for a moment, then asked with complete sincerity:

"Can I call you Male Lord here?"

Metis: "???"

He had only given Caleb some Psychic Soothing. He hadn't accidentally broken his brain, had he?

Factory-reset Caleb had his own internal logic. He explained earnestly:

"We've already left Tianjia territory, so we no longer have to follow the rules of the Tianjia Empire. Theoretically, we can use whatever form of address we want."

"So... you want to call me 'Male Lord'?"

Metis looked confused and strange, as though he had encountered one of the universe's greatest unsolved mysteries.

Caleb nodded and asked with a hint of pleading, "May I?"

Metis hesitantly nodded, still far more puzzled than anything else.

He couldn't help wondering, could this be some kind of special bedroom title?

But even if it was, shouldn't it be something other than "Male Lord"? What Tianjia female would enjoy a form of address that sounded like acknowledging someone as their master?

Could Caleb's hidden trait actually be a submission kink?!

Metis was profoundly shocked.

Caleb, meanwhile, was delighted. Holding Metis in his arms, he worked himself up for quite a while before softly calling out with barely concealed anticipation, "Male Lord."

A tingling numbness spread all the way up Metis's spine, bringing with it the strange sensation of electricity running through his entire body.

Metis thought it had to be because Caleb's breath against his ear was simply too ticklish.

Caleb... really knew what he was doing.

He looked taciturn, always standing quietly in the shadows like some silent guardian. Sometimes Metis even wondered whether he was a mechanical Tianjia.

Yet when it came to flirting with a male, his skill level was astonishingly high, hitting the secret spots in Metis's heart with terrifying precision.

Metis hadn't even truly called him "Female Lord" yet, only for Caleb to beat him to it.

Metis entwined his neck with Caleb's and lightly bit his ear, feeling as though this female had swindled away his entire heart.

This wasn't anything like the marriage Metis had envisioned before, an exchange of interests where each side took what they needed. He had been drawn into unknown territory, and if he continued forward, he might get hurt.

Metis felt a little aggrieved. Caleb had lured him beyond the boundaries of safety, making him surrender everything until there was no longer any possibility of retreat, not even the option of cutting off an arm to save himself at a certain cost.

He had staked everything on this. If a bottomless abyss lay ahead, he had already lost the chance to change his mind.

"Don't hurt me." Metis pressed himself tightly against Caleb and made his request.

Caleb answered him, "I am loyal to you. Male Lord."

...]

It was the readers following the novel who were truly dumbfounded.

[What is Caleb doing? (stunned)]

[Calling a male "Male Lord"? Do Tianjia act like this after being "factory-reset" by Psychic Soothing?]

[Impossible, right? How many tens of thousands of years did he get reset back to? Ever since the Tianjia overthrew the control of the Brain Bugs (males), females have always held power. Even if the earliest males experienced some pain when facing other males, with an instinctive fear and desire to submit, after all these years, generation after generation of inherited memories centered on female supremacy, along with the corresponding genes being passed down, have long since reshaped females both mentally and physically.]

[Could Lieutenant General Caleb have... reverted to an ancestral trait?]

[I'm impressed you managed to dig up such an obscure theory. It's probably just a bedroom kink. Sometimes it's pretty fun to see a male looking shocked.]

[You guys even play like that? (Tianjia on a starship staring at the light screen)]

[I don't think it's just a kink. I've thought for a while that some of Lieutenant General Caleb's behavior was strange. When he mistakenly believed His Majesty the Emperor was involved with the Prince, he was even willing to take a step back and create opportunities for them to spend time together. You could still explain that as yielding to imperial authority. But there were strange details elsewhere too. I used to think it was simply because Lieutenant General Caleb came from a civilian background and therefore had exceptional respect for an Imperial Prince, but combined with some of the wording in the novel, there might be another possibility.]

[What wording?]

["Inherited memories from the other half of his bloodline," "the part belonging to the Tianjia deep in his bones was awakened." Those phrases seemed a little strange when I first read them, but now everything fits.]

[So I wasn't the only one paying attention to that. I've been wondering about it for ages.

"Inherited memories from the other half"... why would inherited memories be divided into two halves? Even if the author wanted to refer to some specific content separately, he could have said "a certain part of his inherited memories" instead of "the other half," which so obviously implies a fifty-fifty split.

And then there's "the part belonging to the Tianjia deep in his bones." What other part is there besides Tianjia?

The answer is already obvious.]

[Holy crap! Lieutenant General Caleb is mixed-blood?!]

This time, it wasn't only the Tianjia who were shocked. Even the Zergs were stunned.

They had constantly joked that Lieutenant General Caleb and the Tianjia Emperor were Zerg undercover agents, but they had never imagined Caleb might genuinely have a connection to the Zergs!

Some old analysis posts were dug up as well.

<Lieutenant General Caleb's Hidden Secret> <Why Caleb's Entire Family Is Fluent in the Zerg Language> <The Mystery of Lieutenant General Caleb's Origins> <Inherited Memories from the Other Half...>

Posts analyzing the subject had already appeared half a month earlier, but at the time, they had been buried among all the various undercover-agent theories and hadn't attracted much attention. The joke theories about the Tianjia Emperor being an undercover agent were far more outrageous and much better at grabbing attention. As a result, netizens assumed these seemingly reasonable analysis posts were just more wildly imaginative jokes. They flooded the comments with "hahahahaha," saying the posters had come up with something interesting, but almost no one took them seriously.

Now, looking back... holy crap! Maybe these weren't just wild guesses pulled out of nowhere. They actually made a lot of sense!

[As expected, you need an outrageous imagination just to keep up with An-shen's sci-fi plots.]

[No wonder he wanted to call the Prince "Male Lord" after being "factory-reset." Turns out the Psychic Soothing dragged his Zerg genes out.]

[#CalebJoinTheZergs]

[Get lost! Lieutenant General Caleb will forever be one of our Tianjia military females! His species field only says "Tianjia"! Forget mixed-blood—even if he were a pure-blooded Zerg, once he joined the Tianjia, he'd be Tianjia!]

Both races had a tradition of picking up eggs from battlefields and simply raising them as members of their own species. Although mixed-blood cases like this were extremely rare, so rare as to be negligible when viewed against the population as a whole, they weren't nonexistent. Both sides accepted such cases quite readily.

The Zergs genuinely had a favorable impression of Caleb and even entertained a tiny thought of winning him over.

But there was absolutely no way the Tianjia would hand one of their high-ranking females and top combatants over to the Zergs.

[Caleb is already calling the Prince Male Lord, so obviously he wants to become a Zerg. Bring the Prince over with you. We're softhearted, so we'll take in both the mixed-blood and the male.]

[And then get dragged before your military tribunal? Don't make me laugh. (eye roll) Once a military female has stepped onto the battlefield, there's no other road left for him. Tianjia in life, Tianjia in death! Besides, Lieutenant General Caleb's Male Consort, His Highness the Prince, is a member of the Imperial Family—an Imperial Prince. There's even less chance of him going to another country.]

The Zerg netizens were only running their mouths. They knew perfectly well that it was impossible and were saying it solely to wage a war of words against the Tianjia.

The two sides argued back and forth, while another group of readers who had come with the attitude of eager students paid no attention to their quarrel and focused entirely on taking notes.

[Calling him "Male Lord" can win a male's heart. Noted, noted.]

[? Are you a Zerg or a Tianjia? What use is taking notes on something like this?]

[Of course it's useful. If you're a Zerg, maybe one day you'll meet a Tianjia male and can lure him back home. If you're a Tianjia... well, a Tianjia can secretly coax his male like this at home. Once the door is closed, no other Tianjia will know. Being happy with your male is what matters most.]

[There are actually Tianjia who think like this? My eyes are falling out from shock.]

[It's not that strange. Maybe there are even Male Zergs who secretly call their own Female Zerg "Female Lord" at home?]

[Impossible! Absolutely impossible!]

[Axel...]

[Uh... that's different. He's an exception. That one has Tianjia blood. (covers face)]

Scrolling through the book review section, Philor suddenly turned his head and asked Cyril, who was leaning against the headboard dealing with work:

"If I called you Female Lord, would you like it?"

Cyril paused. He leaned over to glance at the contents on Philor's light screen, and his brows gradually knitted together.

"What kind of strange ideas are you getting? Stop reading this stuff, or I'll have to put parental controls on your StarNet."

Philor: "Waaah..."

Cyril ignored the whining creature and went back to work, though his thoughts gradually wandered.

Cyril had possessed his own pride when he was young. He had been rebellious and self-assured, arrogant enough to look down on the world, and he had never imagined entering a marriage with some Male Zerg.

He had no interest whatsoever in those arrogant, conceited males with nothing inside their heads, nor any desire to interact with them. He would rather spend that time trying out a new model of mech.

There was no shortage of Male Zergs who abused Female Zergs after marriage, but none of that had anything to do with Cyril. Even if the day truly came when he had no choice but to marry some Male Zerg, he had plenty of ways to keep the other party from causing trouble. At worst, they would simply despise each other.

There would be no point in living that kind of life.

In the end... he married a Male Zerg he never could have expected.

Even Cyril himself hadn't imagined that he would enter marriage so quickly.

Under the lights of the ball, that Male Zerg had looked like a flower just beginning to bloom. His eyes were clear and pure, carrying traces of innocence and curiosity.

Faced with a sight like that, no Female Zerg could have resisted walking toward him.

Female Zergs tended to lose their heads remarkably quickly when they encountered the right Male Zerg. Cyril hadn't believed that before.

Afterward, he did.

A Male Zerg this beautiful and untainted had to be taken home and hidden away quickly, or it would be too late.

Driven by some inexplicable impulse, he proposed to the Male Zerg.

It was a whirlwind marriage that even Cyril himself hadn't expected.

After they married, Cyril spent years away on military campaigns. Distance and time failed to cool his impulsive feelings. If anything, he seemed to be falling even harder.

Cyril himself didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Fortunately, married life turned out even better than the best-case scenario he had imagined. This Male Zerg was genuinely good by nature. Complicated aristocratic social circles and the chaotic world of fame and profit had failed to stain him with bad habits. Instead, they only made his purity stand out even more.

He was his Male Lord.

Because it was Philor, Cyril didn't feel any resistance toward that term.

Although at first, he really had found it difficult to say... Philor was simply too young. Facing a Male Lord so much younger than himself made Cyril feel as though he was taking advantage of him.

He was Philor's Female Consort, his guide. He guided him not only physically, but also through life and through his existence as a Zerg.

Yet on a mental and emotional level, it was Philor who influenced and guided him.

After getting together with him, Cyril felt that his own temperament had become much gentler.

Philor propped his chin on his hand and stared at him, wondering what his domineering, arrogant, ferocious Female Consort was thinking about now.