The Capital Star, a high-end villa district.
Arden dragged his right leg, moving his steps with great difficulty. With every step, a piercing pain shot from his broken bone.
His leg bone, which had been brutally crushed by Tinia's mental coercion in the Valoran black market, had only received the most basic splinting. In his rush to return to the Capital Star, he simply hadn't had the time to enter a medical pod.
Sweat soaked through the fabric on his back. He lifted his head and looked at the white villa ahead.
Standing on the steps at the entrance of the villa were three males. They were Felwin's three A-grade beastmen husbands. Wearing loungewear, they looked down at Arden from their vantage point, their expressions mixed with undisguised contempt.
Arden clenched his jaw, anger surging within him.
He was an S-grade male. Throughout the entire Federation, S-grades were the elites fiercely sought after by major military legions. Wherever he went, wasn't he always surrounded by admirers like stars around the moon?
And now, these three actually dared to look at him with such eyes? If his leg injury wasn't so severe, he truly wanted to release his mental entity, pin these three pieces of trash to the ground, and make them realize the gap in their social standing.
What made him even more frustrated and uneasy was the small metal box in his pocket.
Inside were only ten pills.
On the starship ride back, Arden's brain had rarely worked so hard.
He recalled a few days ago, when Jiang Lijin had just been revealed as a 3S-grade female, he, Kieran, and Rex had gathered to discuss it. At the time, he stubbornly believed it was just a fake stunt Jiang Lijin pulled to garner attention.
But Kieran had refuted him on the spot. Kieran pulled up the testing report from the Imperial Academy of Sciences, pointing at the data and saying, "That deep-level mental power detector is the life's work of the Empire's first-generation great scientists, and its core hub is directly connected to the main brain. There isn't a single hacker in the entire galaxy who can hack into the main brain and alter the data. Jiang Lijin being a 3S-grade is an ironclad fact."
At the time, he and Rex scoffed at it, thinking Kieran was just scared out of his wits.
Now, as the cold wind blew, Arden's remaining fragments of reason returned.
If Jiang Lijin truly was an undeniable 3S-grade, then Felwin's excuse of making him go to the black market to buy twenty illicit mental power pills to "frame" Jiang Lijin seemed incredibly absurd.
Who on earth was this medicine really bought for?
Arden touched the metal box in his pocket, his palms turning cold. But he still held onto a sliver of hope—what if Felwin simply didn't know whether Jiang Lijin's 3S-grade status was real or fake either?
However, he kept his guard up to some extent, deciding not to tell Felwin about running into Jiang Lijin and Tinia.
"Lord Arden!"
The villa door opened. Felwin, wearing a pure white dress with her long hair draped over her shoulders, came out to greet him with slightly red eyes.
She completely ignored her three beastmen husbands, who all bore different expressions, and quickly walked down the steps, reaching out to support Arden's arm.
"What happened to your leg? How did you get hurt so badly?" Her voice was soft and melodic, filled with heartache.
Arden looked at this familiar face, and a third of the doubts in his heart dissipated. "Just a minor accident, it's nothing. I brought back what you wanted."
He handed the metal box over.
Felwin couldn't wait to take it, but when she saw clearly that there were only a pitiful ten pills inside the box, the heartache and tenderness on her face paused for half a second.
Arden failed to catch this detail.
"Why are there only ten?" Felwin looked up, putting her pitiful expression back on. "Lord Arden, didn't we agree on twenty?"
"I ran into space pirates on the flight back," Arden brought out the excuse he had prepared well in advance. "Lost half of them. I risked my life to save these ten."
"Pirates..." Felwin murmured the word, her left hand hanging by her side tightly gripping her dress. But she quickly adjusted her breathing and forced out a smile. "As long as you're okay. If the medicine is lost, then it's lost. Come inside quickly, I'll help you treat your wound."
She stepped aside, making way for him.
Arden didn't notice that the moment she turned her back to him, Felwin's originally delicate eyes instantly turned bone-chillingly cold.
He stepped up the stairs, ignoring the hostile glares of the three A-grade beastmen husbands, and swaggered into the living room.
He didn't take these three pieces of trash seriously at all. Once he officially entered this household, if these three guys dared to speak out of turn, his mental coercion could snap their necks.
The living room was warmly decorated. Felwin helped Arden sit on the sofa, then turned to pour a cup of warm water and handed it to him.
"Have some water first, I'll go get the medical kit."
Arden was indeed thirsty. He took the cup and drank it all in one gulp. The warm liquid flowing into his stomach alleviated the exhaustion of his long journey.
He leaned against the back of the sofa, watching Felwin's busy figure. The three A-grade beastmen husbands didn't follow them; instead, they stood in the shadows at the edge of the living room, staring over ominously.
Felwin returned carrying the medical kit and sat down on the single sofa opposite Arden. She didn't open the kit; instead, she rested her folded hands on her lap.
"Lord Arden, on your way back, did you look at the Starweb forums?" Her voice was still gentle, as if making casual conversation.
"No." Arden frowned. "You know I never read that boring gossip. What's wrong?"
Felwin looked at him without speaking.
The temperature in the living room seemed to drop a few degrees.
"Nothing," Felwin sighed softly, slowing her speech. "It's just that a very interesting exposé thread has appeared on the forum."
Arden froze for a moment. His first reaction was that word had leaked from the black market. He was just about to open his mouth to comfort her when he realized Felwin's gaze toward him had changed.
Those eyes, which were always shimmering with moisture, now held no warmth whatsoever.
"Arden, you were the only one who handled this medicine." Felwin didn't even call him "Lord" anymore, her voice dropping low.
"What do you mean?" Arden sat up straight, aggravating his leg injury, and gasped in pain. "You suspect I posted a thread to ruin you? I don't even have a forum account!"
"Who else could it be but you?" Felwin's voice rose an octave, her disguised gentleness beginning to peel away.
Ten pills. For her current situation, these ten pills were simply a drop in the bucket!
To maintain the illusion of being an S-grade, she had to take half a pill every day. And the most fatal part was that the entry physical examination for the Purification Department could no longer be avoided. To fake a perfect S-grade under the scanner, she had to swallow five pills at once right before the exam!
The remaining five were only enough to sustain her daily consumption for ten days. And after ten days? She would be doing free labor in the Purification Department, providing mental grooming for those males. Without the medicine to support her, her mental power would instantly deplete. Not only would she fall back to her true B-grade form, but she would also face horrifying side effects!
When that time came, the entire Capital Star would know that she was a complete and utter fraud!
And now, that thread on the forum had pushed her right to the edge of a cliff. The poster had described the symptoms of the medicine's effects with crystal clarity. As long as she used the medicine, those traits would be impossible to hide.
"The black market drug dealers would never sell out a buyer for the sake of making money." Felwin stared fiercely at Arden, her perfect expression management completely falling apart.
Her features seemed somewhat harsh due to extreme anger. "My three partners and I share the same interests; we rise and fall together. It is absolutely impossible for them to post such a suicidal thread. The only one who had contact with this batch of medicine, and had a motive, is you!"
Arden looked at the hysterical female in front of him, his mind buzzing.
Was this still the fragile goddess who would mourn for half a day over stepping on a bug?
Jiang Lijin's words rang in his ears once again.
"She wants this medicine to take it herself."
So it was true.
Arden felt a wave of nausea. For this female, he had abandoned Jiang Lijin, gotten his leg broken in the black market, and brought the medicine back like a dog, only to receive this illogical suspicion in return.
"You are crazy, Felwin." Arden sneered, unable to suppress the violent temper he had cultivated from years in mercenary groups. He gripped the armrests of the sofa, preparing to stand up. "Even if I, Arden, were stupid, I would never joke about something like this!"
As soon as he exerted force, he suddenly felt a sharp cramp in his abdomen.
Immediately after, the muscles in his limbs felt as if their strength had been drained, going completely limp. He fell back onto the sofa, horrified to discover that no matter how hard he tried, he could not muster a single trace of spiritual energy.
"What... did you put in the water?" Arden glared at Felwin, cold sweat seeping from his forehead.
Felwin stood up, looking down at him from above. On that pure, innocent face, only a freezing coldness remained.
"A powerful nerve-blocking agent. It works even on S-grade males, enough to keep you quiet for at least four hours."
The three A-grade beast husbands who had been standing in the shadows walked over. Holding high-strength energy binding straps, they skillfully and tightly tied Arden's wrists and ankles to the back of a solid wood chair.
Arden struggled desperately, but the drug took effect incredibly fast, and his movements immediately became weak and feeble.
"Felwin! You bitch! What are you doing!" Arden cursed loudly, his eyes bloodshot.
"Shut up." One of the A-grade beast husbands slapped Arden fiercely, drawing blood from the corner of his mouth.
Felwin walked up to Arden, reached out, and pinched his chin, forcing him to look up.
"Arden, I did not want to make things this ugly," Felwin's voice was freezing cold. "But you have disappointed me too much. Not only did you lose ten pills, but you also posted my secret on the Star Network. Do you know that you almost ruined everything for me?"
"I told you it was not me!" Arden gritted his teeth, blood dripping down his chin onto his clothes.
"It does not matter who it was anymore." Felwin let go and pulled out a wet wipe in disgust to clean her fingers. "What matters is that the entire Star Network is watching that thread now. If the Purification Department traces it back here, I need a scapegoat."
Arden's pupils shrank abruptly.
"You are going to pin the crime of buying contraband medicine on me?"
"You were the one who went to the black market to buy the medicine in the first place, were you not?" Felwin threw the used wet wipe onto Arden's face. "And I am merely a victim who was deceived by you."
She turned to look at her three beast husbands. "Take him to the basement."
The three A-grade beast husbands stepped forward, dragging the limp Arden like a dead dog toward the hidden door leading to the basement.
Arden's vision gradually blurred. In the final moment before he lost consciousness, he looked at Felwin standing in the center of the living room like a venomous snake, with only one thought left in his mind.
Jiang Lijin, just how did you see through this monster?
