Chapter 19: Amber Is Her Connection!
With shaking hands, Su Yulan retrieved the silver-glowing spiritual plant her sister had sent and swallowed it without a second thought.
Instantly, a scorching, violent wave of pure energy swept through her entire body.
She felt as though every single cell in her flesh was cheering, expanding, and dancing with raw euphoria. Her mind cleared to an unprecedented degree. The chaotic world around her seemed to grind to a near-halt; every mechanical gear, hydraulic joint, and microscopic circuit of her heavily damaged mechanical dragon became crystal clear in her mind’s eye.
“So that’s how it works…” Su Yulan gasped as a sudden, profound realization hit her. “I completely overlooked these structural nuances before.”
Her mental capacity didn’t just expand; it rocketed skyward, effortlessly grasping the true, absolute meaning of human-machine synchronization. Backed by a seemingly bottomless well of neural power, Su Yulan felt her consciousness completely fuse with the machine. She was no longer a pilot sitting in a cockpit; she was the dragon.
Did Su Yulan stand up?
No. It was the colossal mechanical dragon that rose from the dirt!
The massive beast slowly, awkwardly hauled its towering frame back onto its feet, striking absolute, paralyzing shock into the heart of every single soul in the stadium.
“How is that possible?!” Pei Xueqing screamed, her voice cracking with sheer disbelief. She had unleashed her absolute highest-DPS, maximum-output offensive skill! It was a coordinated assault executed by a Second Realm Mind Resonance tamer—Su Yulan’s machine should have been completely reduced to scrap metal!
How was she still standing?
The surrounding candidates began to panic, their coordination completely fracturing.
This defied all logic!
They had fought a brutal war of attrition against her, and Pei Xueqing had deployed the peak destructive capabilities of the Mind Resonance Realm. How could Su Yulan possibly pick herself back up?
Under ordinary circumstances, a tamer would have lost consciousness from the severe neural feedback of a crash like that, requiring medical staff to drag them out of the cockpit. But not only was Su Yulan perfectly conscious—she had somehow forced her broken machine to stand!
A deep, suffocating panic seized the remaining candidates. Su Yulan’s raw capabilities transcended their wildest nightmares. When they had swarmed her a moment ago, they hadn’t pulled a single punch; every attack had been executed at maximum threshold because they knew exactly how dangerous she was. They had thrown everything they had into the snare.
They knew for a fact that if they had been on the receiving end of Pei Xueqing’s golden lion strike, they would have been instantly knocked out.
Yet, Su Yulan stood firm.
“Isn’t this… isn’t this getting ridiculous?”
“She… she still wants to fight?”
“How the hell are we supposed to beat a monster like this?”
The morale of the allied candidates disintegrated in a fraction of a second. Was she even human? They instinctively began shifting their mechas backward, utterly terrified by her unnatural resilience.
But high above the arena, in the VIP viewing booths, the academy professors identified the truth instantly. The grading judges bolted out of their leather chairs, their eyes burning with intense, frantic focus as they stared down at the silver-blue dragon.
“A breakthrough! She’s forcing a mid-combat neural breakthrough!”
“What?! Wasn’t she firmly locked at the Second Realm? This spike… don’t tell me she just bypassed the graduation threshold entirely? Did she reach the Third Realm?!”
“Yes! Look at the neural resonance waveforms—there is no mistaking it! It’s the Third Realm: the Telepathic Unity Realm!”
The evaluation panel was in an absolute uproar.
“But she’s only a freshman! Telepathic Unity is a milestone achieved exclusively by elite juniors or seniors! She just single-handedly jumped an entire tier of neural evolution?!”
“An absolute prodigy! A once-in-a-generation genius!”
“Quick! Log her biometrics! Secure her contact file immediately after the buzzer!”
“Calm down, don’t lose your composure! The examination is still actively running!”
“Unbelievable… simply breathtaking!”
The faculty marveled at Su Yulan’s sudden, spectacular ascension. But close on the heels of their awe came a heavy wave of deep regret and pity.
“Such a tragedy that her neural awakening triggered so late. Look at that chassis—the mechanical dragon is already riddled with holes and structural micro-fractures. What hardware does she even have left to wage a battle with?”
The judges fell silent as they scanned the digital damage readout of the arena.
As staggering as Su Yulan’s mental capacity now was, her physical mecha had taken catastrophic, irreversible damage. Every single high-tier skill the alliance had thrown at her earlier had left a permanent scar on the dragon’s frame. The structural integrity was locked in the red zone.
Therefore, even if Su Yulan had successfully brute-forced her consciousness to drag this hollow, broken heap of metal back onto its feet, how could she possibly launch an offensive? For a mechanical tamer, losing your machine meant losing one hundred percent of your battlefield utility.
The dragon was a walking corpse. Su Yulan’s failure was an absolute statistical certainty.
Down on the field, Pei Xueqing rapidly shook off her initial shock, her face contorting into a cold, venomous sneer. “Oh, look at you. So you forced yourself to stand up. What else can a broken machine do? Everyone, swarm her simultaneously! Do not grant her a single microsecond to establish an offensive rhythm!”
She refused to be intimidated by a hollow bluff.
The remaining candidates had been on the verge of retreating, but seeing Pei Xueqing initiate a frantic charge—and remembering the vast military resources her family controlled—they swallowed their terror and locked back into formation.
Following Pei Xueqing’s aggressive directives, the alliance unleashed their final, absolute barrage. From the airspace above, the terrain below, and even from subterranean subterranean launch tubes, a relentless torrent of heavy ordnance fell like a monsoon.
Wang Lei’s mammoth fired its “Silver Frost Cannon,” the colossal energy discharge violently rattling the foundations of the stadium. Lin Xiaoyun’s owl maxed its electronic warfare arrays, flooding the zone with high-frequency interference waves to paralyze Su Yulan’s remaining system logic. Every single competitor bared their fangs; they had crossed the point of no return. Su Yulan had to fall.
Pei Xueqing’s golden lion, “Golden Lion Heart,” accelerated to its absolute limits, transforming into a streak of blinding golden lightning as it launched a lethal pounce straight at the dragon’s exposed cockpit.
“Go to hell!” she screamed through the comm channels.
Facing the oncoming execution strike, Su Yulan’s broken mechanical dragon threw its head back and let out a final, earth-shaking roar. Blinding blue energy arcs violently coursed through its fractured alloy plating—a magnificent, tragic display of an apex predator’s final struggle.
Inside the cockpit, Su Yulan ground her teeth so hard they bled. She had zero escape routes left.
I must prove to my sister that I am strong enough to protect her!
With a furious scream, Su Yulan overridden the safety core, detonating the dragon’s ultimate hidden protocol.
In a fraction of a second, the entire stadium was swallowed whole by a blinding, apocalyptic blue radiance. A catastrophic shockwave of raw energy swept across the arena like a roaring tsunami.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion shattered the air, a massive wall of localized smoke and pulverized steel instantly obliterating everyone’s visual feed.
The live chat rankings went completely haywire:
“WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?!”
“My God, the raw kinetic output is terrifying!”
“AHHH! Clear the smoke feed! I need to see the result!”
“Who survived?! Give us the leaderboard update!”
“Waaah, Yulan, you are too incredible! I’m crying right now!”
“Regardless of the score, you are the undisputed queen of this cohort!”
Every single professor on the evaluation panel was now standing on their feet, their eyes glued to the digital telemetry maps. The shock written across their faces was absolute.
“To orchestrate a counter-offensive of that magnitude from a completely compromised defensive state… what kind of absolute monster is this Su Yulan?”
“Breathtaking. Our academy hasn’t witnessed a dogfight this magnificent in decades!”
Slowly, the dense smoke began to drift apart.
One by one, the broken chassis of opposing mechas were revealed, thrown across the terrain. Wang Lei’s mammoth and Lin Xiaoyun’s owl lay completely deactivated, their operating systems fried as they crashed heavily into the steel bulkheads, entirely stripped of combat utility.
Finally, the camera drones stabilized, focusing entirely on the epicenter of the blast zone.
Who claimed the throne? Pei Xueqing or Su Yulan?
Suddenly, a badly mangled golden chassis was thrown violently out from the thinning smoke ring. It was Pei Xueqing. Her once flawless, multi-million-credit “Golden Lion Heart” was shattered into pieces, thick black smoke billowing from every single hydraulic seal. The machine was a total, irreversible write-off.
When the smoke finally cleared completely, a single, solitary silhouette slowly materialized from the wreckage.
It was Su Yulan.
Behind her, the mechanical dragon had collapsed into a pile of melted alloy and smoking ruins. But the phantom echo of its final, triumphant roar seemed to linger in the air.
Su Wudeng watched as her sister took one agonizing step forward out of the smoke. Her custom white pilot suit was shredded and stained with grease, her pale face caked in soot and fresh crimson blood. But her eyes—her eyes were burning with a fierce, absolute light.
Instantly, the entire stadium erupted into a deafening, thunderous ovation. It was a celebration reserved exclusively for an absolute victor.
Up in the VIP booth, a senior professor let out a long, heavy sigh. “She maximized her neural capacity to force that final output. But the biological toll…” He shook his head grimly.
Beside him, another faculty member frowned deeply, checking the biometric telemetry. “Don’t you find her physical vitals completely impossible? The allied tamers are trapped in their cockpits, paralyzed by the g-force feedback, and her dragon was literally vaporized. How is she physically walking out of that wreckage on her own two feet?”
The judges fell into a stunned silence. A single, terrifying realization gripped their minds.
Just how deep is Su Yulan’s biological potential? She forcibly breached the Third Realm—the Telepathic Unity Realm—mid-combat. Is her raw mental fortitude so absolute that her body can actually absorb the kinetic backlash of a mecha’s destruction?! This is practically miraculous!
Down on the field, Su Yulan slowly, painfully tilted her head up, locking her gaze directly onto the lenses of the hovering camera drone. She knew her sister was on the other side of that lens.
Though her physical frame was on the verge of complete collapse, her lips curved into a proud, triumphant smile. “Sis… I won.”
“So… you don’t ever have to do those dangerous things for me again.”
“Okay?”
The moment the final syllable left her lips, Su Yulan’s eyes rolled back, and she collapsed heavily onto the steel floor boards.
Instantly, the emergency gates hissed open, and the stadium’s entire medical deployment force charged into the arena.
“Medics! Medical extraction, move! Clear the lanes!”
“My God, this is insane! Unprecedented!”
“Why did a routine cohort final turn into a literal bloodbath?!”
“Hurry! Her biometric values are plummeting! Massive internal bleeding and severe organ displacement recorded!”
“Clear out! Deploy the portable stabilization field immediately! Initiate emergency trauma protocols right now!”
The trauma team swarmed her form as the arena descended into absolute chaos. A second later, the main broadcast feed was abruptly cut to a black standby screen.
Back in Pet Love Home, Su Wudeng sat frozen in her chair, her mind entirely blank with shock. The phantom image of Yulan’s blood-stained, smiling face seemed seared into her eyes.
“You absolute, reckless idiot…” she murmured under her breath, a tight knot forming in her chest. “Was it really worth destroying yourself just to make a point?”
The underlying message of her sister’s final words was painfully obvious. Yulan had pushed her biological limits to the absolute brink of death purely to demonstrate that she was strong enough to protect her own future.
“But what the hell did she mean by ‘dangerous things’?” Su Wudeng mused, a sudden realization clicking into place.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake… don’t tell me this dense girl actually thinks I cut a deal with an underground syndicate or a smuggling ring to source the Snow Crystal Cats and the spiritual plants?!”
Realizing the nature of the misunderstanding made Su Wudeng feel a mix of intense heartache and deep frustration.
“You complete dunce. Your imagination is terrifyingly active.”
“Risking your literal life just to tell me you can be my shield… do you think I wanted this?”
The more Su Wudeng analyzed her sister’s logic, the more helpless she felt. She buried her face in her hands, her temples throbbing with a sharp headache. Yulan was still functionally a child, reducing the terrifying complexities of the world into a simple, black-and-white equation.
Did she even consider the permanent, catastrophic sequelae of a forced mid-combat breakthrough? Su Wudeng understood with absolute clarity that Yulan’s final, impossible burst of power had been entirely catalyzed by the Astraea Grass. Without that top-tier spiritual plant flooding her neural pathways, her mental capacity could never have breached the Third Realm so rapidly.
“And… a mechanical dragon! A custom unit like that easily costs hundreds of millions of credits! You spent that much money just to reduce it to a pile of slag during a cohort exam?!”
“You absolute brat!”
“I explicitly told you… your future is brilliant. You just needed to focus on taking care of yourself!”
But she knew she couldn’t waste time seething over her sister’s chaotic antics. Su Wudeng frantically grabbed her communicator and dialed the university’s emergency administrative line, while her other hand rapidly swiped across her console, looking up the fastest commercial flight paths to the Capital Star.
“Hello, I am Su Yulan’s older sister. I need an immediate update on her condition—’”
“Ms. Su, please remain calm,” a gentle, professional female voice smoothly interrupted from the other end of the line. “Su Yulan’s biometrics have been successfully stabilized. She is currently out of danger and has been moved to a recovery ward. She simply requires deep, uninterrupted rest.”
“While it is true her internal trauma is severe, our elite medical team has already administered the absolute highest tier of cellular reconstruction therapy. We anticipate a full recovery within the week.”
Su Wudeng let out a massive breath she had been holding, her shoulders sagging with relief. The Beast Taming University’s infrastructure was top-notch, and a second later, a secure file containing Yulan’s digital medical charts pinged onto her device.
But when her eyes scanned the detailed diagnostic logs, her chest tightened all over again. Though she couldn’t fully comprehend the dense, high-tech medical jargon, the endless strings of red, abnormal values were more than enough to illustrate just how brutally her sister’s body had been broken.
“You idiot… just how much pain are you in right now…” she whispered.
Suddenly, a different, authoritative male voice took over the line.
“Greetings, Miss Su. I am Su Yulan’s lead homeroom professor, Li Nanhai.”
Su Wudeng instinctively straightened her posture. “Hello, Professor Li!” Facing an academic authority figure from an elite institution triggered a subconscious flash of student anxiety.
Li Nanhai spoke with measured calmness. “Please rest assured, Yulan is asleep and stable. I am reaching out directly to discuss her immediate academic arrangements going forward.”
“Right, of course,” Su Wudeng forced her voice to remain steady. “Please go ahead, Professor.”
Li Nanhai continued, “First and foremost, I must extend my formal congratulations. Su Yulan officially secured the absolute number one spot in this cohort examination. In recognition of her extraordinary, historic performance, the university senate has unanimously approved her immediate advancement into the Elite Apex Vanguard Class.”
“The Apex Vanguard Class?” While Su Wudeng lacked deep context regarding the academy’s hierarchy, her educational background allowed her to parse the term instantly. It was the absolute core class of the institution—the designated inner circle reserved for the university’s top prodigies.
“Correct,” Professor Li confirmed. “It is a specialized, highly exclusive track dedicated to engineering humanity’s future fleet commanders and top-tier mecha tamers. We selectively harvest the absolute highest tier of talent to form a small, hyper-focused cohort of elite students. However, there is a critical, institutional hurdle I must communicate with you beforehand.”
“The Apex Vanguard Class enforces an exceptionally strict, uncompromising standard regarding a student’s primary mechanical beast. As you witnessed on the live feed, Yulan’s custom mechanical dragon was entirely vaporized during the climax of the match.”
He paused, letting the weight of his words sink in. “As her legal guardian and family representative, I must inform you plainly: if she cannot procure a customized mechanical beast of an equivalent or superior tier before the new semester commences, the academy bylaws mandate her immediate disqualification and removal from the Apex Class.”
Li Nanhai knew full well the near-impossible gravity of his demand. How on earth was a student supposed to source a machine comparable to a multi-million-credit mechanical dragon over a single summer vacation? Customizing a heavy, giant-class mechanical beast required specialized engineering teams and months of calibration. The financial and logistical barriers were staggering.
And if his records were accurate, Su Yulan’s older sister… was an ordinary citizen stranded in a bottom-tier fourth sector. The probability of her resolving this crisis was virtually nonexistent.
But he had no choice. He genuinely, deeply refused to let a brilliant seedling like Su Yulan be bottlenecked by administrative red tape. To breach the Third Realm—the Telepathic Unity Realm—right at the conclusion of her freshman year was an unprecedented feat. Even on the Capital Star, where geniuses were as common as stray dogs, a prodigy of this caliber was a mythical occurrence. He fiercely treasured raw talent.
Hearing Li Nanhai’s breakdown, Su Wudeng fell into a brief silence. She understood the full scope of what her chaotic sister had done. A hundreds-of-millions-of-credits mechanical dragon, reduced to a pile of scorched slag just to win an exam. What an absolute brat.
Gripping her communicator tightly, she spoke with absolute, unwavering certainty. “Professor Li, please do not worry. I give you my word: I will secure a far superior companion beast for Yulan before the first day of the new semester.”
Li Nanhai could only offer a soft, quiet sigh. “Very well. I trust that you prioritize Yulan’s future far more than I do.”
Meanwhile, inside the main faculty lounge at the Beast Taming University, several lead professors were huddled around a central conference table, quietly debating the aftermath of the match.
“Professor Li, why did you bypass the primary family registry and route the official notification to Yulan’s older sister? Why didn’t you establish contact with her father’s estate?” Zhou Ming, a junior instructor who had recently joined the faculty, asked, entirely confused by the decision.
Li Nanhai shook his head, a complex, bitter smile playing on his lips. “Zhou Ming, did you fail to listen to Su Yulan’s final broadcast before she lost consciousness? Her words were addressed exclusively to her sister.”
“In that child’s eyes, her older sister is her entire universe. I simply chose to respect Yulan’s wishes.” He possessed a decent grasp of the underlying dynamics within the Su family estate. All he could say was… both girls were tragic casualties of high-society collateral damage.
Zhou Ming nodded thoughtfully. “I see. But turning the problem over… for the younger sister to possess this level of world-class biological potential, the older sister shouldn’t be lacking either, right? Why is the older sister running a small retail shop instead of attending an elite academy?”
Zhang Lan, a senior female professor sitting across the table, cut in sharply. “Exactly. And what the hell is wrong with their father? Why would he banish his eldest daughter to a backwater fourth sector? They’re full blood-sisters, aren’t they? Anyone can see how fiercely Su Yulan loves her sister. Yet the entire patriarch’s estate resides in luxury on the Capital Star, while the eldest is left to rot…” In her eyes, the father’s behavior crossed the line into absolute cruelty.
Li Nanhai let out a long, heavy sigh. “The internal politics of that household are incredibly fractured. I’ve managed to piece together some of the parameters. The girls’ biological mother divorced the patriarch years ago. The family currently occupying the Capital Star estate is the new household their father established afterward. Furthermore… the new wife gave birth to a son a few years back. The estate claims the boy is an unprecedented prodigy.”
Zhang Lan’s expression instantly twisted in disgust. “So that’s the play? Even if the patriarch commands a massive fortune, he funnels every single cent into his precious new son? To the point of abandoning his eldest biological daughter in a remote sector?” Is a man like that even worthy of being called a father?
“Furthermore,” Zhang Lan shook her head in deep disapproval, “Su Yulan’s brilliance has officially been unveiled to the galaxy today. Her trajectory will only skyrocket from this point forward. How old is this new son? He’s a toddler; his potential is completely unproven! Yet throughout this entire medical crisis, the patriarch hasn’t even bothered to place a single personal call. He merely dispatched a corporate butler to handle the administrative check-ins. It’s absolutely disgusting.” The lack of basic human affection was sickening. Or rather, his capacity for love was focused exclusively on his precious new male heir.
Li Nanhai spread his hands helplessly. “It is what it is. I can only hope the patriarch doesn’t choke on his own regrets in the future.”
“Indeed. Su Yulan’s evolution today was terrifying,” Zhou Ming marveled. “Among the entire freshman class across the planet, she has effectively isolated herself at the absolute peak!”
Zhang Lan nodded in firm agreement. “Precisely. If she weren’t this spectacular, the senate would never have approved her advancement into the Apex Vanguard Class—a track traditionally locked until a student’s third year.” She paused, a look of deep anxiety clouding her face. “But what a massive tragedy… that mechanical dragon had been synchronized with her neural pathways for years. Their tactical cooperation was seamless. Now that it’s completely vaporized…”
The exact same concern weighed heavily on every professor in the room. Setting aside the logistical nightmare of sourcing a replacement machine, the raw time required to establish a stable neural link with a brand-new system would take months. How was she supposed to survive the brutal curriculum of the Apex Class? Could she even maintain her placement?
“If her father intervened with his corporate connections, she might have a fighting chance,” Zhou Ming sighed. “But it’s clear the patriarch doesn’t give a damn about her survival.”
Li Nanhai shared his grim outlook. While Yulan possessed an intensely devoted older sister, what could a sister stranded in a bottom-tier fourth sector realistically do? Sourcing a luxury, Apex-Class mechanical dragon prototype was an impossibility for a peasant.
He finally stood up, letting out a heavy breath. “Su Yulan’s path forward will be incredibly treacherous. Well, I’ll leave you all to your diagnostics. I’m heading down to the trauma ward to check on her vitals.”
A collective, heavy sigh settled over the empty faculty lounge.
Back at Pet Love Home, Su Wudeng was currently pacing the floor, her mind spinning as she analyzed her options.
Sourcing a mechanical pet replacement was an absolute impossibility. The time constraint alone ruled it out completely. The summer vacation was painfully brief—roughly a month. And a top-of-the-line, Apex-Class mechanical construct like a dragon required months of custom fabrication, software tuning, and laboratory calibration, even if she completely ignored the multi-million-credit price tag. Even if she dropped a fortune on the counter today, the manufacturing timeline would completely miss the first day of school.
This was the absolute Achilles’ heel of the mechanical tamer doctrine. An elite machine had to be manually engineered and structurally calibrated to match the specific, unique neural frequency of the tamer. Generally speaking, an academy student’s primary machine required at least six months of dedicated laboratory tuning.
Especially within an elite institution like the Beast Taming University, every single mecha on that field was a hyper-customized masterpiece co-engineered with the Interstellar Peace Company’s research divisions. They weren’t mass-produced factory units. They were high-end bespoke products tailored down to the millimeter to complement the exact behavioral habits, neural response speeds, and tactical preferences of the individual student.
This rigid requirement was the sole reason the mechanical pet industry had birthed the ultra-lucrative profession of “Mecha Remodelers.” And even the absolute top-tier remodelers in the sector required considerable time to finalize a calibration layout.
Su Wudeng rubbed her throbbing temples. “Even if I aggressively exploit the Great Prosperity Era to gather and sell premium spiritual plants to amass a mountain of credits, I cannot buy more time. Unless…”
Her gaze drifted over to Amber, who was currently completely engrossed in systematically devouring snacks in the corner.
“What if Yulan bypasses the mechanical doctrine completely and establishes a soul-contract with an authentic, living pet beast?”
That would instantly eliminate the entire manufacturing and engineering timeline. As long as the human tamer and the living pet reached a deep spiritual consensus, a formal soul-contract could be finalized in a matter of seconds. Furthermore, in terms of raw combat potential and adaptive intelligence, authentic pet beasts vastly outclassed cold machines, possessing near-limitless evolutionary horizons!
She distinctly recalled Shu Can’s breathless explanation: even within a world-class institution like the Beast Taming University, the number of authentic, living pet contracts approved by the administration each year was strictly limited to one or two slots for the absolute top-tier prodigies.
“Which means an authentic pet contract carries an unimaginably massive, elite prestige within the tamer community,” she realized. If she delivered a living beast to Yulan, her homeroom professor would undoubtedly approve the placement without a second thought!
But a sudden roadblock halted her train of thought. “The soul-contract between Amber and me was a total statistical anomaly. If that chaotic hound hadn’t been an absolute, unhinged glutton, I never could have won him over so effortlessly. Of course, his pack of starving runts also played a major structural role in locking him down.”
“But where on earth am I supposed to source a fully matured, battlefield-ready living beast for Yulan on short notice?”
She turned her gaze back to the litter of puppy huskies tumbling on the rug and immediately shook her head. “These little tykes are still in their baseline infancy and require months of basic conditioning. They are entirely unsuited for Yulan’s immediate needs.” Her sister was about to enter a hyper-aggressive academic track filled with high-stakes combat simulations and field trials; these puppies couldn’t provide immediate combat utility.
Mulling over the problem, Su Wudeng called out, “Amber, get over here!”
Hearing his uploader mom’s summons, Amber immediately abandoned his drawer and trotted over with an innocent prance.
“Woof!” What’s up? Is it dinner time?
Under normal circumstances, the proud hound would never have complied so submissively. But today… his blue eyes looked remarkably shifty. He had secretly raided the snack cabinet and inhaled several premium bags of jerky while her back was turned.
He sneaked a glance at Su Wudeng’s expression. Did the master find out? Is she about to unleash a disciplinary beating?
Just as his hind legs began to subtly, quietly step backward to prepare a retreat, Su Wudeng reached down, firmly clamping her hand around his large muzzle.
“Ahhh!” Dog abuse! Unhand me!
Su Wudeng released her grip, staring directly into his piercing blue eyes. “Stop thinking about food for five seconds. I need to ask you a serious question.”
Amber immediately plopped his rump onto the floorboards, assuming a posture of pristine innocence. You should have led with that! I thought my grand larceny had been unmasked.
“Woof!” Ask away, Master!
Su Wudeng asked thoughtfully, “Do you happen to know of any exceptionally powerful pet beasts back in the Great Prosperity Era? I mean truly formidable creatures, preferably with a relatively stable, cooperative temperament.”
She reasoned that while her own understanding of that untouched world was incredibly limited, the chaotic hound sitting in front of her was an entire indigenous database. Given his robust physical conditioning and the fact that he had safely navigated that perilous wilderness since infancy, he had to have run into his fair share of apex predators. He had to possess a deep map of the local hierarchy.
This was his personal, high-tier network of contacts!
The exact second the question landed, Amber’s blue eyes flashed with a sudden, terrifying surge of pure canine calculation.
Wait a minute. Is the master growing tired of my massive food intake? Is she trying to scout a replacement pet to phase me out?!
Oh hell no! That is absolutely out of the question!
