Chapter 6: Do you have a personal terminal?

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The Imperial Military Forum wasn’t anonymous, and even if it was, the empire only had two SS-grade males!

[Holy shit, General Yu Chenyu!]

[Hi General! Can you tell us a bit about what your Lord Wife looks like and how he is?]

[Yeah yeah, tell us! If I have the chance to marry him, I’ll definitely serve him well and serve you well at the same time!]

[People with an 87% match rate go away! If he’s marrying, he’ll marry people with over 90% first!]

[Who cares who goes first? Let’s go together! That female’s spiritual power can’t be below S, S-grade females have no upper limit to how many mates they have!]

[Hey, that’s right. What grade is that female’s spiritual power? The general is married so he should be able to see it, right?]

[General Yu Chenyu, please share it! Your wife can’t log into the military forum anyway!]

[Seconded!]

Yu Chenyu narrowed his eyes.

It had only been a single night yet the entire empire was aware of his marriage?

Although he wanted to find out who leaked the news, his wife was still waiting for his dinner.

Thus, he only replied with a [No comment] before exiting the forum, closing all the screens in front of him, and going to the dining room with a plate in each hand.

He put all the dishes on the table and set out the tableware, then called Qi Zihan to eat. “Lord… Zihan, the food is ready.”

As he spoke, he pulled out a chair for Qi Zihan.

When he stood from the sofa, Qi Zihan was already so hungry that his legs were soft.

He walked the few steps to the chair that Yu Chenyu had pulled out for him and sat down. While internally sighing at his thoughtfulness, he drooled at the aroma and silently swallowed several gulps of saliva.

“Let me try it.” Pretending to be calm, he raised his chopsticks, picked up a cola chicken wing, and took a delicate bite.

Back on Earth, his family was rather well-off. While he knew how to cook, basically all his meals were prepared by hired chefs, and there were also maids who cleaned the entire villa.

There were only two things he was responsible for: studying and exercising.

Therefore, while he couldn’t accept Yu Chenyu kneeling naked in front of him as he asked to be whipped, he didn’t feel uncomfortable at all when he served him food, and even enjoyed it.

Just take it as hiring an all-round housekeeper.

But housekeepers needed to be paid…

Qi Zihan ate two bites of food and drank a sip of the soup, then praised it as ‘not bad’. But before Yu Chenyu could be happy, he brought up working again. “You said before that females can do relatively light work, so what do they usually do?”

Hearing this, Yu Chenyu put down the chopsticks he had just picked up. Although his expression didn’t change, Qi Zihan could feel his resistance, and could detect that he didn’t want to answer this question.

It wasn’t hard to guess why, so Qi Zihan emphasised again, “I won’t divorce you, but I haven’t decided whether to accept you either. You can treat yourself as being single, it’s just that we’re living in the same place, and since we’re just living together, I can’t waste your money. You’ve treated me to this meal, so I’ll pay you back once I find work.”

Yu Chenyu picked up his chopsticks again but didn’t eat anything.

After staring at his empty bowl for a moment, he abruptly said, “Although the Female Association helped you find your house, I was the one who paid for it.”

Qi Zihan: “…”

“Eight million credits, bought in full,” Yu Chenyu said with his eyes downcast, not daring to meet Qi Zihan’s gaze. “As I understand it, the average monthly wage for working females is approximately 2,500 credits.”

Qi Zihan did some quick calculations. Even if he only wanted to pay back half of Yu Chenyu’s money, which was 4 million credits, with an annual salary of 30,000 credits, he would have to work for 133 years…

He raised his hands to cover his face. After he was sure that it was impossible to clear this debt, he decided to cheat. “I was too careless just now. Isn’t spiritual soothing from females very important for males? Something so important, how can it be free? One session for a hundred… no, one session for a hundred thousand credits, how about it?”

He thought that if he charged 1 million credits per session, then if after eight sessions were done and Yu Chenyu still gave him money, he would be committing fraud!

Yu Chenyu knew that Qi Zihan wanted to use spiritual soothing to offset the house payment. He thought that it was cute of him to want to pay off the money even if it meant cheating, but he couldn’t laugh.

Because he knew very well that Qi Zihan only wanted to find a job or offset the house payment to distance himself.

They’d obviously already married, he obviously decided not to divorce, so why did he still want to sever ties?

And what would happen after that? The next step… was it to divorce again?

Yu Chenyu kept his eyes lowered without saying anything.

Qi Zihan was right. For males, spiritual soothing from females was indeed important, so important that its value couldn’t be measured by credits.

Yet for females, what were males good for?

Males were only worth whatever they could create.

In other words, the money earned by males was to be spent by females — this itself was a price for obtaining spiritual soothing.

Therefore, Yu Chenyu truly didn’t care how Qi Zihan spent his money, even if he threw it all into the sea.

But he cared if Qi Zihan didn’t spend his money.

“Is a hundred thousand per session too expensive?” Seeing that Yu Chenyu didn’t speak, Qi Zihan thought that it was too much, so he compromised. “Then, ten thousand per session?”

“No,” Yu Chenyu finally said, forcing out the word as if through gritted teeth. Then, he forced himself to look up at Qi Zihan and said in a voice hoarser than usual, “I don’t know how many times I’ll need soothing in my life, so I want to exchange all the money I have for the right to get it from you at any time, is that okay?”

Towards the end, his voice trembled a little, as if he was suppressing… fear?

He knew that he had no right to negotiate with females.

Females could do whatever they wanted, how could a male interfere?

But although he knew, he still said it in a fit of pique.

You can cheat to offset the house payment.

So I can also cheat to force this money back to you.

It certainly wasn’t that he thought he had too much money. Rather, the reason why he wanted to give all his hard-earned savings to Qi Zihan was, on the one hand, to consolidate their marriage, and on the other hand, to give himself a sense of security.

Because it was too easy for females to break off their marriage — sometimes, males would wake up one day to find themselves inexplicably divorced. Thus, married males would always feel uneasy, fearing that they hadn’t given enough to their females, that their females wouldn’t be satisfied with them.

Yu Chenyu once thought that he wouldn’t be like this.

It was only after marriage that he realised he was afraid too.

Especially after finding out that his wife was a SS female zerg who could have countless spouses.

He was really afraid of losing him.

Hearing that Yu Chenyu wanted to use all his money in exchange for a lifetime of soothing, Qi Zihan admitted that he was a little tempted. “How much do you have left?” he asked tentatively.

“Not much, only seven million.”

“Huh.” Qi Zihan had thought that Yu Chenyu was some kind of billionaire — after all, he paid in full for the 8 million credit house — but his remaining balance wasn’t even as much as the house valuation…

“Not enough?” Yu Chenyu turned from defense to offense. “Then you name a price first. When I go back to the front line, I’ll do my best to get more merits on the battlefield to pay off what I owe you.”

“…”

Qi Zihan didn’t know how things got to this point.

He was obviously the one who was living and eating in Yu Chenyu’s house for free, so how did it suddenly turn into Yu Chenyu owing him money?

In addition, even now, Yu Chenyu still hadn’t touched the food on the table, as if waiting for permission.

Feeling a little overwhelmed, Qi Zihan decided not to talk about money with him in the future.

“Never mind, let’s talk about this later,” he said, taking a sip of the sweet corn soup and licking his lips. “Since you’re not short of money, I’ll use it for now. But I still don’t know how to soothe males — is it through spiritual power? Do I also have spiritual power?”

“Everyone has spiritual power.” As he explained, Yu Chenyu’s face looked much better, and his tone gave off a feeling of relief. “Your spiritual power is SS like mine, but the way females use it is completely different from how males use it, so I can’t teach you personally, but I can find you some information…” At this point, he suddenly remembered something and asked  Qi Zihan, “Do you have a personal terminal?”

“What’s a personal terminal?” He put down a half-eaten chicken wing, and urged, “Eat it, it won’t taste good when it’s cold.”

Yu Chenyu hummed, put a piece of meat into his bowl, then answered Qi Zihan’s question first without eating. “A personal terminal, also known as a portable optical computer, can be used to access the internet, chat with others, and look up information. Some places require swiping a personal terminal to enter, or paying a fee using the terminal. Your data has already been entered into the system and you should have your own exclusive account there which you can log into with spiritual power, but it’s probably mostly empty. If you don’t have a terminal I can buy you one and teach you how to use it.”

“Oh, okay.” Qi Zihan guessed that the ‘personal terminal’ he was talking about should be similar to a mobile phone but more advanced, with an electronic ID attached or something?

Yu Chenyu carefully selected a model on his own terminal and placed an order.

Soon after they finished eating, the snacks and optical computer he ordered were delivered by shipping robots to the balcony.

He placed some snacks on the coffee table and the rest in a cupboard, then washed the dishes.

Only after washing and tidying up did he begin to teach Qi Zihan how to use a personal terminal.

There were only two ways to log in to a terminal: one, to use a spiritual power imprint; or two, to enter their ID number then confirm their identity through facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and voice recognition in sequence.

None of it used the passwords that Qi Zihan was familiar with.

He guessed that it might be because some zergs possessed certain abilities that rendered passwords useless, therefore something as important as a personal terminal simply didn’t use such an unsafe method.

“If it’s your first time using spiritual power, let me think…” As a general, Yu Chenyu had taught many of his soldiers how to use spiritual power to kill aberrants, but this was the first time to teach someone how to use spiritual power to log in on a terminal.

For zergs, spiritual power was like another limb on their bodies. Most were born knowing how to use it, the only difference was in the extent.

This was the first time he saw a zerg who was unable to use spiritual power.

Yet for some reason he had no doubt that Qi Zihan would be able to learn.

After all, he was an SS-grade female!

“I think using spiritual power may require a little imagination,” Yu Chenyu said, trying to articulate what he felt while using spiritual power. “Spiritual power is tangible. You can think of it as an invisible hand. It exists in your mind, but you can control it to leave and touch things similar to spiritual power in the wider world.”

Saying so, he raised a hand and stretched it in front of Qi Zihan with its palm facing up.

Just as Qi Zihan was wondering what he wanted to do, he saw beautiful blue lights suddenly appear in his palm, which gradually gathered together and formed a crystal clear, light blue… mantis?

“This is a spiritual mimic,” Yu Chenyu explained, “when you master your spiritual power to a certain extent, you can create a specific form which can be used to attack enemies… No, for females, it should be to use mimicry to soothe males.”

“Using mimicry to attack enemies?” Looking at the mantis in Yu Chenyu’s hand, he couldn’t imagine how it would kill anything.

Anyway, he should try to log in to the optical computer with his spiritual power first.

An invisible hand, right?

Then he’ll just visualise his spiritual power as a hand.

He stared at the terminal on his left wrist, imagining a formless hand hovering over it, then imagining extending its index finger and pressing the screen.

[Identifying spiritual power.]

[Identification successful.]

[Sir Qi Zihan, good afternoon. As this is your first time logging in to your terminal, do you require a tutorial?]

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Author:
It’s a mantis, not a man!

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