The damaged airship shell had been stacked piece by piece by Wang Luan, but it was not tightly fitted, with many gaps left in between.
During the day, she had piled these shells up mainly to block the sun. Who would have thought that this place, unbearably hot in the daytime, would become so cold at night, with the wind blowing so fiercely.
Wang Luan deeply felt that she should not have been lazy and rushed for speed. Having to crawl up to repair the house on such a cold night was retribution.
She had no choice but to turn on that small lamp and fasten it to her body, then find tools to reassemble the shell plates one by one.
Without adhesive, she could only use hard, small supports to pierce through two shell plates and fix them together.
Fortunately, in her current body she was an alpha, and her strength had increased recently. Otherwise, she probably would not have been able to pierce through these hard shells that had suffered impact.
Yan Qiongyu also wanted to get up to help, but Wang Luan stopped him.
“You rest first.” She did not say much, but Yan Qiongyu guessed that she might have noticed his weakness.
He did indeed want to hide his weakness, but since it had been seen, there was nothing he could do. The cold in his body and the dizziness in his head both gave him a bad premonition. Sitting on the airbag bed, he kneaded his throbbing temples.
Wang Luan bustled about, enclosing the entire airbag bed and making a semicircular temporary shelter, like a large bowl overturned on the ground.
At the entrance, she blocked it with a dismantled airship wing. As a result, this “little house” became much narrower than before, but also much warmer, with only very small gaps left to let in a bit of wind.
Crawling into the narrow wind shelter, four-fifths of the interior space was occupied by the airbag bed, and the remaining space was only enough for one person to stand.
Returning to the airbag bed, Wang Luan felt there was no need to be averse to Yan Qiongyu anymore—she herself now felt like a block of ice.
Yan Qiongyu was still holding her from the side. Wang Luan was not used to it, but after a long day of exhaustion, and enduring the pain in her arm to do all this work, she could not help but fall asleep.
In her hazy state, she felt herself being held tighter and tighter, almost to the point of being unable to breathe.
The person holding her was trembling—an unnatural shiver. Wang Luan woke up from the cold. Outside, it was still the middle of the night, and the only warmth from Yan Qiongyu sleeping beside her came from where he was pressed against her chest.
Shining the light over, his eyes were tightly closed, his face pale like a white flower fallen on the ground, unconsciously trembling from the extreme cold.
Wang Luan was startled. She raised her hand to touch his face, and then his hand. “Wake up.”
The usually alert man did not respond. He had already lost consciousness.
This would not do. The night on this desolate planet was too long—much longer than the nights on the Imperial Capital Star. If this continued, by morning, not to mention Yan Qiongyu, even she herself probably would not be able to hold on.
Wang Luan frowned and thought for a moment, then wrapped the blanket completely around the unconscious Yan Qiongyu. Taking the lamp and tools, she left this tiny house and ran through the cold wind toward the crater smashed out by the airship.
The half-dismantled airship leaked wind from everywhere. Wang Luan searched carefully through the chaotic ruins, getting herself filthy in the process, but she could no longer care about that, focusing only on finding what she wanted.
Energy or fuel.
The airship’s energy was essential for space jumps. After the explosion at the space node, their airship had been flung through several spaces and made multiple jumps. The energy had been completely consumed before they landed here, but there might still be some fuel left for flight.
Wang Luan smashed open the fuel compartment and, to her disappointment, found not a drop of fuel inside. She stood up and glanced back at the quiet little house in the dark night, pressed her lips together, and stubbornly continued searching.
She remembered seeing in some airship manual that certain airships had emergency fuel compartments. Groping around in the darkness for a long time, she finally found a small fuel compartment.
She hacked it open with force, revealing a shallow layer of fuel inside—very little, but enough to fill Wang Luan with delight.
At least for tonight, at least it could last for a few hours.
She gathered up some of the parts she had just dismantled, carried this tiny amount of fuel back to the little house, modified a spare small engine she had taken apart, poured in the fuel, and the engine began to hum, a wave of heat quickly filling the room.
Squatting by the outlet emitting warmth, Wang Luan let out a long breath.
Seeing that Yan Qiongyu still had no reaction, she went out again to get some water and brought it back, placing it above the engine, hoping to use the heat it emitted to thaw and warm the water that was almost frozen solid.
Feeding him some hot water should help, right?
ততততততততততত
Winter—Yan Qiongyu could never forget that winter.
The teacher who had raised him, insulted him, and told him that his mother was a slut had died, from an illness. She died too quickly; he had not yet had time to take revenge, so he was not happy.
The adults thought he was grieving for that teacher’s death, but they knew nothing.
A new teacher came to the academy to take charge of caring for him. That teacher always scrutinized him with cold eyes.
He said to him, “I come from the ‘Utopia,’ the ideal country of all omegas. Our supreme leader, Yan Mu, is your mother. However, your existence is a disgrace to her. Your very existence represents this filthy empire’s persecution and humiliation of her. I have come to purify you, this evil child.”
From the disgust in that man’s eyes, Yan Qiongyu could tell that he wanted to kill him. Yet whenever he moved to act, he always hesitated, because Yan Qiongyu looked very much like Yan Mu, and this man who claimed to come from the Utopia was clearly infatuated with Yan Mu.
At that time, Yan Qiongyu was still very young, but he already knew how to use everything that could be used to protect himself. He seemed to be born with the ability to see through people’s hearts.
So again and again, he escaped from this man’s hands, and used various methods to send himself into the hospital. Only in the hospital could he temporarily avoid those dangers.
For various active or passive reasons, he was often sick as a child. The physical pain was not that unbearable. Lying on the hospital bed, he looked at the heavy snow outside through the window divided into small panes, thinking about how to save himself the next time.
That truly was a long winter. He clearly knew that no one could protect him.
ততততততততততত
Yan Qiongyu woke up from unconsciousness. For a brief moment, he thought he was still in that cold winter day, but very quickly, the warmth surging up from his limbs and bones brought him back to clarity.
The past had already passed, and now, in the narrow, dim little space, he used the faint light to see the situation before him.
Wang Luan, whom he had held in his arms before falling unconscious, was half leaning against the bed, sleeping soundly, while he was resting against her chest, the two of them tightly huddled together.
There were still some stains on her body, carrying a not very pleasant smell of fuel.
Yan Qiongyu saw the modified engine by the bed and felt the lingering warmth in the room. His gaze flickered slightly; he could more or less guess what Wang Luan had done.
The stabbing pain in his head had not yet eased. He moved slightly, wanting to sit up.
This movement startled Wang Luan. With her eyes closed, she groped around for a moment, touched Yan Qiongyu’s slightly cool hand, frowned, and out of habit tugged him closer, letting him lean against her chest.
Yan Qiongyu listened to her steady heartbeat and tapped her arm lightly with his fingers.
After about ten seconds, Yan Qiongyu clearly felt Wang Luan’s body go stiff. She stiffly raised her arm to release him, rolled over with her back to him, then pulled up the blanket and faced the wall, not moving at all.
Watching this series of actions, Yan Qiongyu could guess her mental process—from being half-asleep and instinctively sharing warmth with him, to gradually waking up and realizing what she was doing, and thus pretending nothing had happened and even starting to avoid him.
Seeing that she stubbornly refused to open her eyes, as if still fast asleep, Yan Qiongyu smiled, sat at the edge of the bed, leaned over, gently placed his hand on Wang Luan’s shoulder, and said to her, “Thank you.”
After saying that, he got up. With her eyes closed, Wang Luan heard the faint sound of clothes rubbing behind her, and then he pushed aside the barrier and went out.
There were no more sounds in the room. Only then did Wang Luan turn over and open her eyes to stare at the ceiling, exhaustedly letting out a curse.
Last night, she had really been worried that Yan Qiongyu would freeze to death. Seeing his hands and feet cold, she had overcome her psychological barrier to hold him to keep him warm, fed him hot water, and tossed about for most of the night.
The light outside shone in through the tiny gaps. The engine by the bed had long since stopped, having used up the very last drop of fuel.
Pushing the door open and walking out, it was bright daylight outside, the sun already up. Once the sun came out in this place, the temperature rose sharply, showing not the slightest trace of last night’s bone-freezing cold.
With her hair a complete mess, Wang Luan walked over to Yan Qiongyu. “Are you feeling better?”
Yan Qiongyu rarely spoke a truth: “Not very good. I might need to rest for two days.”
Today, it seemed he would not be able to go to other places according to plan.
Wang Luan did not mind. “Then you rest. I’ll go take a look around by myself later.”
Yan Qiongyu: “Are you okay going alone?”
Wang Luan was helpless. “Yes. After all, I’m an alpha.”
After coming to this world, she was still used to distinguishing herself and others by male and female, but now that they were in distress, she finally had a bit of awareness of the AO distinction.
“Sorry. I’ll recover as soon as possible and help out,” Yan Qiongyu said with a smile.
“Don’t.” Wang Luan raised one hand and waved it. “As long as you’re fine, don’t die, and don’t leave me here alone, I’ll be very grateful.”
The two chatted a bit, drank some water, and shared a tube of nutrient solution. Yan Qiongyu leaned to the side and closed his eyes to rest, while Wang Luan brought over the heat-absorbing panels she had dismantled, along with a pile of tools, knocking and tapping, piecing things together.
Last night’s cold still made her uneasy. If she could not solve the heating problem, she did not know whether they would be able to endure tonight. There was not a single drop of fuel left. She thought again of the heat-absorbing panels—perhaps they could absorb heat during the day and be used for warmth at night.
But after assembling the heat-absorbing panels, she found that there was no way around the need for energy.
Without energy to drive them, relying only on the materials themselves, the heat-absorbing panels could not absorb much heat at all, nor could they release heat in large amounts.
Dejected, she put down the tools. Wang Luan looked at the sky, stood up, took some water with her, and greeted Yan Qiongyu. “I’ll go look around nearby and see if there’s anything usable.”
Watching her figure walk farther and farther away, Yan Qiongyu withdrew his gaze.
Under the sunlight, his body temperature rose rapidly, to a level that was somewhat abnormal.
Yan Qiongyu, who had been resting with his eyes closed, opened a pair of dark, heavy eyes, felt around on his body, took out a folding capsule, removed a vial of medicine from it, and injected it into himself.
This was an omega’s estrus suppressor.
Like an alpha’s susceptibility period, an omega’s estrus period generally appears after coming of age, a signal that the body and glands have matured.
The first time is usually accompanied by some physical discomfort. Last night, his whole body being cold also had to do with the estrus period approaching.
When he woke up in the morning, he felt that his sense of touch and smell had become much sharper, able to clearly smell the mixed scents on Wang Luan’s body. At that time, he guessed that the estrus period might be close. As expected.
At a time like this—of all times, it had to be now.
The suppressants he carried on his body to prevent accidents numbered only three, far from enough.
