Chapter 2: Estrus Causes a Commotion, Jiang Chenyan Sizes Up Shen Shiyue…
While Jiang Chenyan was sizing up Shen Shiyue, Shen Shiyue was also sizing him up.
The person who had suddenly appeared in the bathroom still had a black mask hanging loosely off his chin, clearly having been pulled down in a hurry. He hadn’t even had the time to put it on the table. The exposed face was very eye-catching, the lines sharp yet carrying a soft curve.
Shen Shiyue’s expression changed several times, ultimately condensing into a bit of impatience. When he spoke, it carried a touch of chilliness.
“Have you looked enough?”
Jiang Chenyan finally snapped back to reality. His cheeks burned slightly as he hurriedly took a half-step back and closed the door.
“Sorry about that.”
Right before closing it, he sneaked a peek at the protagonist shou’s abs. Great figure, looks like he’s trained a lot over the years.
Jiang Chenyan returned to his bed and flipped through the books related to the Alliance Military Academy’s courses.
The required subjects were flight training, mecha piloting, spacecraft design, and combat arts.
There were also elective courses later on. Interstellar network development was what Jiang Chenyan wanted to study the most. The reason was simple: in his previous life, he was a top-tier hacker + proficient in all kinds of internet development. Even though he had transmigrated into a book, he still preferred staying in the field he excelled at.
After flipping through just a few pages, the sound of the bathroom door opening rang out.
Jiang Chenyan subconsciously closed his book and looked over. Shen Shiyue walked out wrapped in a dark bath towel, water droplets still dripping from the tips of his hair, sliding down his neck into the collar hidden by the towel, leaving a few wet trails.
Jiang Chenyan steadied his mind, stood up, and extended a hand toward the other party: “Hello, I’m Jiang Chenyan. We’ll be roommates from now on.”
Since he had to change the protagonist’s fate, he needed to get on good terms with the protagonist shou.
Shen Shiyue’s gaze paused on his face, and after a brief hesitation, he also reached out his hand: “Hello, Shen Shiyue.”
The moment their fingertips touched, Jiang Chenyan belatedly noticed that the large shadow Shen Shiyue cast as he approached almost completely enveloped him.
He looked up in a daze, only then realizing with shock that the other person was actually half a head taller than him. He hadn’t paid much attention from a distance earlier, but now that they were standing close, that sense of oppression clearly washed over him.
Jiang Chenyan opened his mouth, but swallowed back the words that reached his lips.
Wait, isn’t there some mistake? Is this really the protagonist shou? Since they were both Omegas, how could he be so much taller than him?
His mouth twitched, and he casually found a topic.
“I heard a noise in the bathroom just now and was worried something happened to you, so I quickly ran over. Who knew the door would open with just a light touch.”
“The bathroom door has a fingerprint password lock.” Shen Shiyue’s brow furrowed slightly, his eyes showing obvious suspicion. “You didn’t know?” According to school rules, everyone’s fingerprints were uniformly collected before school started. How could this new roommate be completely unaware of this?
Jiang Chenyan was instantly at a loss for words. It was his fault; having only transmigrated a few days ago, his understanding wasn’t comprehensive.
System: [Host, aren’t you going to explain? You’ve messed up big time right at the start.]
Jiang Chenyan: If you don’t know how to speak, shut up.
“Oh, I just recorded my fingerprint without thinking much of it. So that’s how it works, ha.”
Shen Shiyue, “…”
Jiang Chenyan bit the bullet and kept making up nonsense. “Speaking of which, I guess I have to thank you for earlier. If the door hadn’t opened, I would have been blindly worrying outside for a long time.”
As soon as the words came out, even he felt it was forced, so he promptly changed the subject.
“Seeing you come all this way, you must be exhausted, right? Then I won’t disturb your rest.”
Shen Shiyue nodded faintly, his tone betraying no emotion: “I understand. You too.”
Jiang Chenyan turned around, sat back on his bed, grabbed a set of pajamas randomly from the closet, and pulled the curtain to change.
But he had no desire to sleep. After changing into his pajamas, he simply pulled back the curtain, sat cross-legged on the bed, and opened a game. The light from the screen reflected on his face, his fingertips dancing rapidly across the virtual keys.
On the other side, Shen Shiyue changed into a crisp training uniform and was looking down, making his bed. His movements were clean and efficient, without any unnecessary dragging, as if he had practiced them thousands of times.
Jiang Chenyan glanced over inadvertently and noticed a thin layer of calluses on the back of the other’s hands and knuckles.
For some reason, the hot blood from just winning a team fight in the game hadn’t faded yet. Staring at those hands, Jiang Chenyan was driven by some strange impulse to blurt out a sentence.
“If you ever encounter any danger in the future, just hide behind me. I’ll protect you.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Shen Shiyue’s hand, which was smoothing the bedsheet, abruptly stopped. He turned his head, his brow raised slightly, confirming whether he had heard wrong.
Opposite him, Jiang Chenyan was wearing a loose white pajama top and shorts, revealing two fair, slender legs, looking entirely like a spoiled young master who had never suffered hardships at home.
Shen Shiyue lowered his eyes to look at those two pale, thin legs. They were much thinner than an ordinary Alpha’s.
His eye color shifted, and an imperceptible arc hooked the corner of his mouth.
This new roommate was a bit different.
Jiang Chenyan’s intestines were green with regret. As soon as the words left his mouth, he started regretting it. Not only was Shen Shiyue more than half a head taller than him, but the abdominal muscle lines he had vaguely glimpsed when he was changing were also much sturdier than his. Plus, he had calluses developed from years of training. On what grounds did he say he was going to protect the other party?
If this wasn’t bringing humiliation upon oneself, what was?
Feeling a bit defensive, he lowered his head and silently fiddled with the game in his hands.
The light from the game screen was suddenly mostly blocked by a shadow. Jiang Chenyan unexpectedly heard a smiling question from above his head: “You’re going to protect me?”
His hand trembled, and his game character died on the spot. He then snapped his head up. At some point, Shen Shiyue had moved closer, looking down at him from a height.
“Yeah.”
Shen Shiyue chuckled softly, the sound sweeping past his ear like a feather. In the next second, Jiang Chenyan felt an itch on the back of his neck. The other’s fingertips seemingly brushed against his skin, bringing a slightly cool touch, so fast it felt like an illusion.
“Okay,” Shen Shiyue’s voice lowered a bit, his eyes obscure and unreadable, “you protect me.”
As soon as he finished speaking, he straightened up and backed away, turning to continue organizing his things. His movements were so natural it was as if the momentary approach and touch just now had never happened.
Jiang Chenyan stiffened. An inexplicable sense of weirdness crawled up his spine, but he couldn’t grasp the specific source.
That spot on the back of his neck that was touched just now seemed to still retain a very faint sensation.
But he didn’t care too much. Since they were both Omegas, a little touch was no big deal.
“By the way, don’t forget to change into your training uniform later. We need to test our pheromone levels in a bit.”
Shen Shiyue’s voice was neither high nor low, like a small pebble tossed into a calm surface of water.
The other party’s words exploded like a clap of thunder by Jiang Chenyan’s ear. He was completely dumbfounded.
What was going on? Why had the plot suddenly veered to this stage?
He rapidly called out to the system in his mind: [Why has the plot advanced to this stage?! Was there a plotline about testing pheromone levels in the original text?! Where the hell did you drop me!]
System: [This seems to be the prologue part. The protagonist shou had an enhanced inhibitor, so everyone thought he was an unpresented Beta, successfully escaping this crisis.]
“Actually, I’m more curious about how the cannon fodder resolved this crisis.”
Jiang Chenyan’s gaze unconsciously drifted toward Shen Shiyue. As expected of the protagonist, to easily bring something like an inhibitor into the strictly controlled military academy. How exactly did he evade the layers of inspection?
The system’s reply was ice-cold, devoid of any emotion: [I don’t know, because you are a cannon fodder, the author didn’t write it.]
Jiang Chenyan: “…”
He nearly choked to death on that answer.
He couldn’t possibly borrow one from Shen Shiyue, right? He couldn’t even imagine how beautiful that scene would be.
[Don’t worry, Host. With me around, would I let anything happen to you? Just go for it. The power of the plot is magical; you won’t be taken offline early.]
Jiang Chenyan, “…”
This was way too unreliable.
He realized that even if he tore the whole book apart, it would be useless. The descriptions of the cannon fodder were too scarce, and key information was welded shut. At this point, other than biting the bullet and trusting this damn plot, it seemed he had no other choice.
Unless he self-destructed his identity to borrow an inhibitor from the protagonist shou.
System: [Stop thinking about it. The protagonist shou only has one inhibitor.]
Jiang Chenyan, “…”
Perfect. The path was sealed.
The pheromone level tests were conducted in batches by dormitory. Jiang Chenyan’s dorm was assigned to the second batch. He dawdled while changing into his training uniform, feeling a hundred and twenty percent reluctant, but he still had to follow Shen Shiyue and merge into the line in the corridor.
Shen Shiyue suddenly asked him, “You look a bit pale. What’s wrong? Are you nervous?”
Jiang Chenyan forced a smile that looked uglier than crying. If his Omega identity was exposed, he’d be swept out of the military academy on the spot. Expulsion meant mission failure and being obliterated by the system. He was about to get his boxed lunch, how could he not be nervous?
He was scared to death.
He stubbornly shook his head. “No.”
Shen Shiyue withdrew his gaze, comforting him in a flat tone: “That’s good. I thought you were very nervous. It’s just testing a level, it’s really nothing.”
Jiang Chenyan, “…”
He really wanted to lean into Shen Shiyue’s ear and ask: Aren’t we both Os pretending to be As? Bro, are you really not nervous?
Just as they arrived at the testing area, the originally milling crowd suddenly parted like they were pushed by an invisible force, automatically clearing a path. The surrounding discussions also abruptly became noisy.
Jiang Chenyan was stunned by this spectacle and subconsciously asked the person next to him, “What’s going on?”
Someone nearby answered, “What else could it be? The two from our school are definitely going to test first.”
“Isn’t that the truth! I have such high hopes for Xie Huaijin. His maneuvers in the last mock battle were absolutely incredible!”
“God of War Mu isn’t bad either. I heard his combat skills have been boundlessly strong since he was a kid, and his pheromone suppression is top-tier…”
The chatter rose and fell. At the mention of those two names, the crowd boiled over. Alphas always admired the strong.
Jiang Chenyan could figure it out with his toes; those two’s pheromone levels were bound to be the highest S-rank.
The author, to highlight the protagonist gongs, had even forcefully pushed it to SS-rank.
Sure enough, as soon as the test results came out, a wave of gasps erupted from the crowd, followed by an irrepressible commotion.
“Holy shit, SS-rank, unseen in a century, and our school produced two of them?!”
“Two SS-rank big shots in the same school, nobody can beat this prestige!”
“Just thinking about how strong their pheromones will be when they clash… hiss, I don’t even dare to imagine!”
“Haha, bro, your left and right brains are fighting each other.”
“Get lost.”
The waves of discussion rolled over layer by layer, and even the air seemed to float with excited and tense particles.
The testing officer looked at the final jumping values on the instrument, his eyes filled with unconcealable gratification. He nodded slightly to the two of them: “The future of the Alliance Military Academy should have good seedlings like this.”
Saying that, he made a clear mark on the recording board.
When it was the turn for Jiang Chenyan’s group to step up, he had just taken a step forward when he unexpectedly collided with Mu Si’an’s gaze.
The other’s gaze carried a penetrating scrutiny, like an invisible net dropping down over his head, impossible to evade.
Jiang Chenyan lowered his head, his brow tightly knit.
He felt he was probably overthinking it. How could Mu Si’an recognize him? He had been wearing a mask at the time.
The line ahead shortened bit by bit, and soon it was Shen Shiyue’s turn.
Watching Shen Shiyue’s back as he walked toward the testing platform, an inexplicable irritability flared up in his heart. Some novel tropes popped into his mind: after an outsider transmigrates, the plot inevitably collapses.
He couldn’t help but silently pray in his heart: The plot must hold steady, please don’t let anything go wrong.
…
Because the line was split into two columns, two people were tested simultaneously. Adhering to the principle of stalling for time, Jiang Chenyan secretly slipped toward the back of the line.
Originally, everything was normal, and the line was progressing in an orderly manner…
Suddenly, an even more violent commotion exploded without warning. Unlike the passionate cheering for the double SS-ranks just now, this noise carried a distinct restlessness.
“Wait… this smell is…”
“It’s Omega pheromones!”
Someone shouted first, and the surrounding Alphas all changed expressions, subconsciously tensing their bodies. Lower-level Alphas were already affected by the Omega pheromones, struggling to keep their balance. Their gazes uncontrollably darted toward the source of the scent, and the source of the Omega pheromones was in the direction of the pheromone level testing.
Jiang Chenyan’s heart violently leaped into his throat.
An Alpha shouted, “An Omega has infiltrated the students undergoing the level test!”
Jiang Chenyan’s heart suspended even higher.
Shen Shiyue was among those undergoing the level test!
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