VAP - Chapter 115
Chapter 115: The Marshal's Journey is the Sea of Stars (11)
Sheng Xuejiu was, in fact, just saying that.
Of course, she knew that Yue Du wouldn't develop any unusual feelings for Ying Wei.
It was just that possessiveness was carved into her very bones, just like her sloth, lust, and pride; it was impossible to uproot, no matter what.
Appeased by Yue Du, the Marshal naturally fell silent, satisfied.
Just then, Ying Wei, who had stepped off the platform, hesitated for a moment before walking over to them.
"Marshal," she said, raising her head and speaking with a steady voice.
Sheng Xuejiu hadn't expected her to approach. She raised an eyebrow. "I've said it before. On campus, you're to call me Instructor."
Ying Wei replied, "I know. But my future goal is to join the Silver Lion Legion and fight under your command. The title of Marshal is more fitting."
Yue Du paused.
She carefully studied the heroine's expression and was suddenly struck by a realization: the emotion in Ying Wei's eyes was clearly admiration—
Sure enough, Ying Wei's next words were: "Excuse me, Marshal, did my performance just now meet your expectations?"
Sheng Xuejiu said, "It was decent, for your age group."
"Then could you offer some guidance? I want to know my weaknesses." Ying Wei offered a smile that was both earnest and a little shy.
At this point, even someone with the lowest emotional intelligence could see what was happening.
Yue Du subconsciously crossed her arms, thinking to herself, Just who is supposed to be the jealous one here!
Sheng Xuejiu glanced at Yue Du thoughtfully before turning back. "What do you think your problems are?"
Ying Wei said, "My technique isn't proficient enough, and I'm not decisive enough when I strike. If I didn't have an advantage in strength and reaction speed, I wouldn't have won this match."
Sheng Xuejiu raised an eyebrow. "Since you already know all that, why bother asking me?"
Ying Wei froze, stammering, "I thought... your perspective would be more professional than mine."
Sheng Xuejiu said, her face impassive, "Perhaps. But until you've improved your technique, any other critique is useless."
Ying Wei: "..."
Sheng Xuejiu: "Got it? If you got it, go practice."
Ying Wei: "...Yes, Marshal."
The heroine had arrived full of hope and left in low spirits.
Yue Du, who had watched the entire exchange, felt that before she'd even had time to process it, her host had already scared off a potential rival with her sheer bluntness.
Sheng Xuejiu turned back and winked at her.
Yue Du smiled and raised a hand to take hers.
If they were outside, her white deer would have surely materialized by now to lean against the Marshal's side and gently nuzzle her hand.
Yue Du, of course, also took a turn on the platform later, but for her, it was all routine.
Unlike her still-green classmates, Yue Du had killed before. She had fought on the Ayers Continent and in the Qianhong Divine Province, where a single thought truly decided life and death.
After all the new students had taken a turn, only a tenth of them managed to emerge victorious, and most of those were narrow wins.
Among the losers, almost none left the platform unscathed. Many were even "killed" once, forcing them to log out directly.
Sheng Xuejiu swept her gaze over the crowd meaningfully. "Everyone, log off."
And so, everyone logged off.
A moment later, they climbed out of the school's military-grade, egg-shaped holographic pods and stood obediently in several rows.
Sheng Xuejiu paced before the dejected new students, letting out a deliberate sigh for them to hear.
"..." The students' heads hung even lower.
"You've all been pretty proud of yourselves, haven't you?" the Marshal sneered. "Awakening as Sentinels, and so-called elites whose strength and five senses surpass the ordinary, at that. Did you think the future of the military was yours for the taking?"
"No," the girl whose Quantum Beast was a tigress said softly. She was one of the few who had won on the platform.
Sheng Xuejiu said, "The winners don't need to speak. You've at least proven you're qualified for the battlefield."
Someone protested resentfully, "But the opponents were randomly matched! Some people got paired with new recruits and had an easy win. The ones we faced were clearly battle-hardened. Why does losing to them mean we're not qualified?"
"Being matched with an opponent of comparable strength is a form of luck, and luck is part of your overall strength. Did you really expect the battlefield to have one-on-one duels?" Sheng Xuejiu said with cold sarcasm. "King versus king, general versus general, adult Zerg versus veteran, larva versus new recruit? Are you going to exchange names with the Zerg before you fight, too?"
...It was obviously impossible.
The dissenting voice immediately fell silent.
With no one else raising objections, the Marshal finally delivered a satisfying, eloquent lecture, leaving the other supervising instructor speechless.
Yue Du was in the winning group, so she wasn't among those being reprimanded. Thus, she was not only calm but also felt a bit nostalgic.
After all, Yun Yijiu had a quiet and cold personality and preferred action over words. Sheng Xuejiu was different; she was quite fond of verbal expression, with verbal combat skills comparable to Qi Jiu's and devastatingly effective.
Thinking about it, her host seemed quite suited to teaching, didn't she?
The thought had barely formed before Yue Du dismissed it.
With her host's teaching methods, she feared the students would collectively shut down. They were just kids, after all. Such innocent kids.
Finally, as the young Sentinels reflected in silence, the Marshal closed her pretty mouth and waved her hand, dismissing them.
A dejected crowd left the StarNet training room, among them an equally dispirited instructor. Under the Marshal's barrage of scorn, even a member of the military academy's faculty couldn't maintain his composure.
Yue Du fell behind, utterly impressed. "Do you normally lecture your subordinates like that?"
"Sometimes," Sheng Xuejiu said. "Their resilience is much higher than these kids'."
Probably because you trained them that way, Yue Du thought.
The two of them walked back to Yue Du's dorm room.
It was already five-thirty in the afternoon. Sheng Xuejiu couldn't be bothered to go to the cafeteria, so she opted for a delivery service and waited for dinner to be brought to them.
Yue Du turned on a playback device, and the sound of a soft night rain filled the room.
This kind of white noise had a soothing effect on a Sentinel's mind, and Sheng Xuejiu was no exception.
The white deer materialized. The long-haired cat padded over lightly and leaped with practiced ease onto the deer's beautifully curved back—it had already become its favorite spot, a veritable private throne.
The intimacy between the Quantum Beasts was the same as always.
Yue Du looked at the cat's owner and suddenly furrowed her brow.
"Ah Jiu, if I remember correctly, have you never had a Guide perform a mental sorting for you?"
Sheng Xuejiu said nonchalantly, "Never... I don't need a Guide." She paused, reaching out to play with the white deer's soft, snowy tail, letting it curl around her slender fingers. "Of course, you're the sole exception."
She said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world, but Yue Du's frown only deepened.
For Sentinels, mental sorting was essential. The amount of information they processed in daily life and combat far exceeded what an ordinary person could imagine.
The stronger their five senses, the more information they received, and this overload was enough to make any normal person irritable, short-tempered, lose control, and even suffer a mental breakdown.
The only ones who could help them sort through this information were Guides. Yet, a standard mental sorting could only clear out a fraction of it. Much more chaotic information remained hidden in the depths of their mental landscape, waiting for a bonded Guide to sort through it.
This was why unbonded Sentinels had such short lifespans. None of them lived past one hundred, which, in an interstellar age with an average lifespan of two hundred, was considered dying tragically young.
Would her host be constrained by the limitations of a Sentinel's body? Yue Du couldn't be sure.
Yue Du herself possessed five senses far more powerful than any Sentinel's, capable of processing more information than ten thousand Sentinels combined. This was because she was a System; her very essence was data.
But Sheng Xuejiu was not.
Yue Du said, "I want to see your mental landscape."
"No, you can't," Sheng Xuejiu immediately refused. "You've only recently awakened, and your abilities are still unstable. Whether it's rashly performing a mental sorting or entering a Sentinel's mental landscape, both carry a certain degree of risk."
Yue Du said, "Not as a Guide, but as a System."
A mental landscape was the tangible manifestation of a Sentinel's or Guide's spiritual world. In simple terms, it was the same as the mental spaces and spiritual domains she had encountered before.
That was a System's home turf. What threat could it possibly pose? Even the depths of Yun Yijiu's sea of consciousness had never harmed her.
Sheng Xuejiu said, "You don't understand. No matter what kind of being you are, there's potential danger if you enter."
She fell silent for a moment before adding, "In this respect, I'm different from the other 'me's.'"
The long-haired cat faithfully reflected its owner's state of mind. It leaped off the deer's back and began to pace anxiously on the floor.
But even in its agitation, its tail remained lovingly coiled around the white deer's slender legs.
Yue Du tilted her head, gazing into her host's dark eyes. After a long moment, she chuckled softly.
"But I can't stay away forever. A mental landscape is too important to a Sentinel. As your Guide, I have to keep a close watch on it."
Sheng Xuejiu repeated, "You are my Guide."
Yue Du said, "Isn't it obvious?"
The Marshal's thoughts were a mystery, but she suddenly broke into a happy smile. "Then let's wait a while longer. I promise, there won't be any problems with my mental landscape."
"Not even a surface-level mental sorting?" Yue Du pitched eagerly. "I haven't had any professional Guide training, but I read up on the materials a couple of days ago. I can handle a surface-level sorting."
Sheng Xuejiu said, "...I'm afraid that will also have to wait a while."
Yue Du said, "A surface-level sorting shouldn't require entering the mental landscape."
"That's true," the Marshal said, clearing her throat and composing herself. "Actually, there's something I never told you. A Guide once tried to perform a sorting for me, but she failed. It was a complete disaster—that's the only way to describe it."
"It wasn't because you were rejecting her, was it?" Yue Du guessed.
"That was one reason. The other is that there's no chaotic information in my surface thoughts."
Yue Du: "..."
She said in disbelief, "That's impossible."
The Marshal shrugged. "At least, that's the conclusion every Guide has reached."
Yue Du didn't believe her and attempted to check for herself.
A gentle stream of mental energy touched the Marshal's cool, pale wrist and spread inward as if patrolling its territory, ready to smooth out any chaotic information it might encounter.
But her mental energy was not needed.
It was true. Sheng Xuejiu's surface thoughts were even cleaner than an ordinary person's, nothing at all like the "tangled mess" described in the textbooks for Sentinels.
"Now I believe you when you say there's nothing wrong with your mental landscape," Yue Du said.
It wasn't just "nothing wrong"; it was perfectly fine.
As if in agreement, the long-haired cat let out a lazy meow, climbed back onto the white deer's back, and settled down comfortably.
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