Chapter 32: Another Fish the Original Host Had Hooked

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Yunfu looked at Gu Lin, still somewhat uneasy, and asked whether she should soothe him once more.

It might have seemed like a last-minute scramble, but it worked.

Soothing a heavily contaminated beastman consumed a great deal of mental energy. If too much was expended, it could cause irreparable damage to a female’s body.

Gu Lin had only received her soothing the night before. Unwilling to let Yunfu exhaust herself again, he shook his head.

“I’m fine. I’ll be back as soon as the examination is over.”

The man gently tucked the loose strands of hair from Yunfu’s cheek behind her ear. His movements were tender, and his voice was soft as well, as though he were speaking to a young cub—a rare display of tenderness from such a tough man.

Seeing how calm Gu Lin was, Yunfu felt reassured for the moment.

After watching Gu Lin and Valen leave the villa, Yunfu told Qin Min that she wanted the research institute to help produce the soothing perfume.

Perfume was a consumable for males. There was no way she could keep up with the demand on her own, and she had no desire to remain in the laboratory making perfume all day. It was simply too exhausting.

“You’ve seen how effective the soothing perfume is at lowering contamination levels in males. It would be a tremendous help to the Empire, and it would benefit your research institute as well. How about we split the profits from its sales evenly?”

Yunfu adopted the stance of an equal negotiating partner, making no attempt to force Qin Min to agree through her status as a female lord.

That very equality brought a hint of warmth to Qin Min’s eyes.

“Miss Yun is offering the institute so many benefits. If I refused, wouldn’t that make me an ungrateful fool?”

With a smile in his voice, Qin Min extended a hand toward her.

“The institute agrees to cooperate with Miss Yun. I look forward to our partnership.”

Qin Min agreed so readily that Yunfu could not help asking, “Don’t you need to consult the others at the institute?”

The corners of Qin Min’s thin lips curved upward. He took her slender fingers in his hand and bent slightly, bringing his gaze level with hers. Yunfu’s consciousness nearly sank into his beautiful pale-blue eyes, deep as the sea.

“There’s no need. The research institute belongs to me. What I say goes.”

That sounded far too much like a domineering corporate tycoon.

“But now, your word carries just as much weight, my partner.”

Qin Min’s voice was gentle and thoroughly bewitching. Combined with his mild expression, it gave anyone the illusion that he was hopelessly in love with them.

Yunfu smiled as well, thinking that this merfolk truly possessed an astonishing talent for seduction.

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After they finished discussing the matter, Qin Min noticed Yunfu turning the scale he had given her over and over in her fingers. In an excellent mood, he went off to the research institute to work for her.

Yunfu curled up on the sofa, eating the fruit salad made by Zero-One. She also had the robot deliver a portion to Lu Shiling, who was being held at the detention center.

Just as she was reading Lu Shiling’s excited yet haughty reply, another message popped up on her cerebral computer.

[ Xiao Yi: Yunfu! Are you still planning to come to work at the medical center? If you don’t show up today, I’ll apply to the Empire to have you dismissed from the medical center and barred from ever being hired again! ]

What work? Had there ever been such a thing?

Yunfu sat up straight and questioned the system. When it confirmed that this really was the case, she was left utterly dumbfounded.

After graduating, the original Yunfu had been assigned to work at the medical center. Since she possessed no mental energy, she had not been given the position of soothing beastmen. Instead, she had been assigned the sort of nursing duties that involved bandaging beastmen and administering injections.

But that was not the important part. The important part was that the original Yunfu had cast her net far and wide. She had not only taken a fancy to that peacock beastman; she had also tried to curry favor with Xiao Yi. She had once promised to give him a dragon-horn ornament, though Xiao Yi had never paid her the slightest attention.

The smile at the corners of Yunfu’s lips stiffened.

So the original owner had cut off her own husband’s dragon horns in order to please males outside her household?

The system replied, “Bingo. You’re exactly right, Host. After being despised by all four of her husbands, the original owner turned her attention to several young and promising males who ranked just below them in the Empire.”

“She gave the peacock beastman a fan made of fish scales, and this Xiao Yi a dragon-horn ornament. The blood-and-offal stew made from snow-wolf blood and the cape woven from red-fox fur were also gifts for males she had set her sights on.”

“After the latter two males were brutally beaten by the snow wolf and the fox, they cursed the original owner as a lunatic and fled to the frontier planets to exterminate the insect race.”

Yunfu was completely speechless.

The original owner had dreamed of becoming a notorious heartbreaker, but lacked even the skill to catch a single fish. She had made a complete mess of everything and left behind a mountain of trouble.

Yunfu felt thoroughly depressed. Still, after looking into the matter, she discovered that the medical center was essentially a hospital.

Treatment pods were prohibitively expensive, and not everyone could afford one. Beastmen who could not buy them had to seek treatment at the medical center instead.

Several females with considerable mental power also saw patients there. Beastmen without female partners who could no longer endure the torment of mental contamination would come and queue for soothing.

The problem was that they rarely managed to get a place in line.

Yunfu tapped her chin thoughtfully. If she worked there, soothing beastmen would be much easier.

Contrary to Gu Lin’s concerns, after her beastman-attraction halo had leveled up, Yunfu could clearly feel that her mental power had become considerably stronger and more concentrated. The jellyfish’s ability to digest the black mist had also improved.

Previously, she could soothe at most seven beastmen in a day. Now, she could probably soothe twice that number.

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With that thought, Yunfu rose and sent Xiao Yi a message, saying that she would head to the medical center immediately.

[ Xiao Yi: Heh. You’d better come. If you don’t, don’t bother coming ever again. ]

He certainly seemed to have a grudge against her.

Then again, what supervisor could possibly have a good temper with an employee who never came to work, still collected her salary, and constantly harassed him?

Yunfu shut off her cerebral computer. After thinking it over, she took Zero-One to the kitchen and described several snacks and afternoon-tea recipes from the real world, asking him to prepare them.

She wanted to keep working at the medical center, and she hoped the working environment would become a little more pleasant. Bringing some afternoon tea with her might help improve everyone’s impression of her.

With Zero-One and several fully automated food-processing machines, more than a dozen portions of afternoon tea were ready in no time.

Yunfu changed into another dress and came out to find that Zero-One had already loaded all the refreshments onto the aircraft. The two of them could depart at once.

Yunfu boarded the aircraft and was just about to quietly look up the medical center’s location when Zero-One entered the destination and activated the aircraft.

When they arrived, Yunfu was about to take a few trays of refreshments herself, but Zero-One had already made all the arrangements and brought several robots along. There was no need for her to lift a finger.

Yunfu therefore walked ahead while the golden-haired, golden-eyed man and the robots followed behind, carrying bags filled to the brim. The moment they entered the medical center, they attracted countless gazes.

The beastmen who had come for treatment stared at the breathtaking female before them, whose scent was practically comparable to an aphrodisiac for beastmen.

Their tails wagged furiously. They wanted to approach her and strike up a conversation, but Zero-One frightened them back, leaving them able only to stare at Yunfu without blinking.

Xiao Yi was coming downstairs at that moment. Hearing that the beastmen who had arrived at the medical center today were unusually restless and agitated, he assumed that something had gone wrong and hurried over to investigate.

Then he saw Yunfu, surrounded by a crowd of beastmen—exquisitely beautiful, so stunning that she seemed separated from them by an invisible dimensional wall.

Xiao Yi did not recognize her as the lazy, malicious female who constantly harassed him. He assumed that Yunfu had come to visit a friend with gifts.

The man who had come rushing over to suppress the disturbance now frowned deeply at the beastmen gathered around her, while feeling immense pity for the delicate and beautiful female at the center of it all—the very source of the commotion.

“All of you, go back and line up. Stop crowding around here.”

Honestly, did they not know that females were most frightened by rough beastmen like them—beastmen who lost all sense the moment they saw a female?